Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
\
12, ."XtXo
PRINCETON, N. J.
PRESENTED BY
Division ~~..irr ^^
Section
v.U
Copy I
THE MYTHOLOGY OF ALL RACES
Volume XI
LATIN-AMERICAN
Volume I. Greek and Roman
WnxiAU Sherwood Fox, Ph.D., Princeton University.
Volume V. Semitic
R. Campbell Thompson, M.A., F.S.A., F.R.G.S., Oxford.
IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES
LOUIS HERBERT GRAY, A.M., PH.D., Editor
GEORGE FOOT MOORE, A.M., D.D., LL.D., Consulting Editor
LATIN-AMERICAN
BY
HARTLEY BURR ALEXANDER, PH.D.
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA
VOLUME XI
BOSTON
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY
M DCCCC XX
Copyright, 1920
By Marshall Jones Company
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
which the book has been put through the press, and the duty
of oversight has fallen upon the author who Is, therefore,
Introduction i
I The Islanders 15
II The First Encounters 18
III Zemiism 21
IV Taino Myths 28
V The Areitos 32
VI Carib Lore 36
Chapter II. Mexico 41
I Middle America 41
II Conquistadores 44
III The Aztec Pantheon 49
IV The Great Gods 57
1 Huitzilopochtli 58
2 Tezcatlipoca 61
3 Quetzalcoatl 66
4 Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue 71
V The Powers of Life 74
VI The Powers of Death 79
Chapter III. Mexico (continued) 85
I Cosmogony 85
II The Four Suns 91
III The Calendar and its Cycles 96
IV Legendary History 105
V Aztec Migration-Myths in
VI Surviving Paganism 118
Bibliography 379
ILLUSTRATIONS
FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE FACING PAGE
I The Dragon of Quirigua — Photogravure .
Frontispiece
II Antillean Triangular Stone Images 24
III Antillean Stone Ring 28
IV Dance in Honor of the Earth Goddess, Haiti ... 34
V Aztec Goddess, probably Coatlicue 46
VI Tutelaries of the Quarters, Codex Ferjervary-Mayer
— Coloured 5^
VII Coyolxauhqui, Xochipilli, and Xiuhcoatl 60
VIII Tezcatlipoca, Codex Borgia —
Coloured 64
IX Quetzalcoatl, Macuilxochitl, Huitzilopochtli, Codex
Borgia
— Coloured 70
X Mask of Xipe Totec 76
XI Mictlantecutli, God
Death of 80
XII Heavenly Bodies, Codex Vatlcanus B and Codex
Borgia
— Coloured 88
XIII Ends of Suns, or Ages of the World, Codex Vatica-
nus A — Coloured 94
XIV Aztec Calendar Stone 100
XV Temple of Xochicalco 106
XVI Section of the Tezcucan "Map Tlotzin" — Col-
oured 112
XVII Interior of Chamber, Mitla 118
XVIII Temple 3, Ruins of Tikal 126
XIX Map of Yucatan Showing Location of Maya Cities 130
XX Bas-relief Tablets, Palenque 136
XXI Bas-relief Lintel, Menche, Showing Priest and
Penitent 144
XXII "Serpent Numbers," Codex Dresdensis
— Coloured 152
XXIII Ceremonial Precinct, Quirigua 160
xvi ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE FACING PAGE
XXIV Image in Mouth of the Dragon of Quirigua . . . i68
XXV Stela 12, Piedras Negras 178
XXVI Amulet in the Form of a Vampire 190
XXMI Colombian Goldwork 196
XXVIII Mother Goddess and Ceremonial Dish, Colombia . 200
XXIX Vase Painting of Balsa, Truxillo 206
XXX Machu Picchu 212
XXXI Monolith, Chavin de Huantar 218
XXXII Nasca Vase, Showing Multi-Headed Deity .... 222
XXXIII Nasca Deity, in Embroidery —
Coloured .... 226
XXXIV Nasca Vase, Showing Sky Deity 230
XXXV Monolithic Gateway, Tiahuanaco 234
XXXVI Plaque, probably Representing Viracocha .... 236
XXX\TI Vase Painting from Pachacamac —
Coloured . . .
240
XXXMII Temple Windows, Machu Picchu
of the 248
XXXIX Carved Seats and Metate 264
XL Vase from the Island of Marajo 286
XLI Brazilian Dance Masks 294
XLII Trophy Head, from Ecuador 304
century Spaniard
— friar, bishop, or cavalier gives to them
the flavour of their translation and context, and thus estab-
lishes a sort of community between all groups of ideas so de-
4 INTRODUCTION
scribed. Nor need this be matter for regret: primitive thought,
with its burning concreteness and its lack of relational expres-
of discovery —
seeing, as it were, with Spanish eyes the —
natural continuation is on to Mexico and Peru, and thence to
the more slowly uncovered regions of central South America.
This procedure, also, follows a certain bibliographical trend:
the relative importance of Spanish authors is much less for
the latter chapters of the book, and the sources of material,
in general, are of later origin.
narration, the mere need for coherence will compel some in-
terpreting; while every translation is, in its degree, an inter-
pretation (and one literally impossible). Besides and beyond
all this,there are the prepossessions of the recorders to be
taken into account —
honest men who interpret according
to their lights. There are the Biblical prepossessions of the
early Padres, for whom the Tower of Babel and the Dispersion
INTRODUCTION 7
facts, but
it is usually possible in such records to detect
the influence of the impulse which first brought him Into the
field,
—
and which, It may be added, makes of his services a
8 INTRODUCTION
matter for the gratitude of all who follow him. A second in-
terest, which is often not sharply divorced from the first, as
instanced in Missionary Brett's poetizing of the myths of the
Guiana Indians,'* is the aesthetic and imaginative. What
classical mythology has done for the art and poetry of Chris-
tian Europe all men know: Dante and Milton, Botticelli and
Michelangelo are only less its debtors than are Homer and
Phidias. Further, the Renaissance curiosity, with its passion
for the antique gems and heathen gods whose forms so stimu-
lated Its own expressions, was at its height when America was
discovered and conquered; and it is small wonder that that
Interest was transformed, where the marvel of the New World
was In question, Into a wave of American exotism which rose
to its crest In the humanitarian enthusiasm of the eighteenth
human progress.
Finally, it is perhaps worth observing that America affords
a field of truly unique profit for all of these interests. The
INTRODUCTION ii
THE ANTILLES
I. THE ISLANDERS 1
predominance.
1 6 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
There a superficial resemblance between the connexions
is
of the northern and southern land bodies in the Old World and
in the New — the
Isthmus of Suez having its counterpart in
Panama; the peninsulas and large islands of southern Europe
corresponding to Florida, Yucatan, and the Greater Antilles;
and the break at Gibraltar suggesting the uncertain bridge of
the Lesser Antilles. But the resemblance is merely superficial.
The Mediterranean served far more as a unifier than as a
divider of cultures and civilizations in antiquity; all its shores
were in a sense a single land even before Rome united them
politically. The Caribbean, on the other hand, was a true
obstacle to the primitive intercourse of the western conti-
solid land of the Isthmus, while the islets of the Lesser An-
tilles and the isle-like oases of the Sahara were alike unfriendly
to profoundly influential Intercourse.
In one striking particular the analogies of the Old World
are reversed in the New: at least in recent periods, the migra-
tion of native races and culture has been from the south to
the north. This the more extraordinary in view of the land
is
world."
Something of the same idealization, coupled with a happy
ignorance, underlay, no doubt, the statement which Columbus
makes in his letters to Ferdinand's officials, Gabriel Sanchez
and Luis de Santangel, describing his first voyage: "They
are not acquainted with any kind of worship and are not
THE ANTILLES 19
heaven, and the Indians whom he took with him from his first
landing, to serve as interpreters, cried out to the others,
"Come, come, and see the people from heaven!" This same
simplicity was cruelly exploited by the Spaniards of later date,
for after themines of Hispaniola were opened, and the native
labour of the island was exhausted, the Bahamas were nearly
emptied of inhabitants by the ruse that the Spaniards would
convey them to the shores where dwelt their departed rela-
tives and friends. Belief in heaven-spirits and belief in living
wood from their new realm, fruits and cotton and slaves, but
"gold as much as they need"; and this promise was all too
well founded for the good of either Spaniard or native, since
the spoil of western gold, more than aught else, resulted in the
wars which eventually impoverished Spain; and thirst for
sudden wealth was the chief cause of the early extermination
of the native peoples of the Antilles. Las Casas, bitter and
full of pity, gives us the contrasting pictures. The first is of
the cacique Hatuey,^ fled from Haiti to Cuba to escape the
III. ZEMIISM8
they suspect they will come, they take away their cemis and
hide them in the woods for fear they should be taken from
them; and what is most ridiculous, they used to steal one an-
other's cemis. happened once that the Christians on a
It
sudden rushed into the house with them, and presently the
cemi cried out, speaking in their language, by which it ap-
peared to be artificially made; for it being hollow they had
applied a trunk to it, which answered to a dark corner of the
house covered with boughs and leaves, where a man was con-
cealed who spoke what the cacique ordered him. The Span-
iards, therefore, reflecting on what it might be, kicked down the
cemi, and found as has been said; and the cacique, seeing they
had discovered his practice, earnestly begged of them not to
connected with the old Antillean cults. There are idols and
images, ranging in height from near three feet to an inch or
so; and the latter, often perforated, were used, perhaps, as
Peter Martyr describes: "When they are about to go into
battle, they small images representing little demons upon
tie
Maorocoti; while Fray Ramon Pane gives names for the Earth
Mother Atabei ("First-
closely paralleling Peter Martyr's list:
^°
priest, or medicine-man], and he will inform you who I am.'
The man repairing to the said physician, tells him what he
has seen. The wizard, or conjurer, runs immediately to see
the tree the other has told him of, sits down by it and makes
it cogioba [an oifering of tobacco] . . . He stands up, gives it
all its titles, as if it were some great lord, and asks of it, 'Tell
26 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
me who you are, what you do here, what you will have with me,
and why you send for me? Tell me whether you will have me
cut you, whether you will go along with me, and how you will
have me carry you; and I will build you a house and endow it.'
Immediately that tree, or cemi, becomes an idol, or devil,
become a zemi. The early writers all dwell upon this belief
in the potency and propinquity of the souls of the departed.
belly, and if they cannot find their navel, they say they are
dead; for they say the dead have no navel." The navel is the
symbol of birth and of the attachment of the body to its life;
hence the dead, though they may possess all other bodily
members, lack this; and the Indians have, says Pane, one
name for the soul in the living body and another for the soul of
the departed.
The bones of the dead, especially of caciques and great men,
enclosed sometimes in baskets, sometimes in plaited cotton
images, were regarded as powerful fetishes; and from what Is
not, and what he says is done. I have taken pains to find out
was some Valhalla reserved for the brave, such as the Norse-
sent cycles of tales shared by all the Taino peoples. They be-
lieve, says the friar, in an Invisible and immortal Being, like
druvava, and the first story that Pane tells is one of which we
would fain have a fuller version, for even the fragmentary
THE ANTILLES 31
begging of the earth, saying, *toa, toa,' like one that very
earnestly begs a thing, they were transformed Into little crea-
32 LATIN-AMERICAN MltT^HOLOGY
tures like dwarfs, and called tona, because of their begging the
earth." Martyr's more prosaic version says that they were
transformed Into frogs; but both authorities agree that this is
bonito, and she taught him the use of amulets and of orna-
ments of white stone and of gold. Peter Martyr's variant
says: "He Is supposed to go to meet a beautiful woman, per-
ceived In the depths of the sea, from whom are obtained the
white shells called by the natives cibas, and other shells of a
yellowish colour called guianos, of both of which they make
necklaces; the caciques. In our own time, regard these trinkets
as sacred." In this there is a striking suggestion of the Pueblo
V. THE AREITOS
^^
"TheSpaniards," says Peter Martyr, "lived for some
time In HIspaniola without suspecting that the Islanders wor-
shipped anything else than the stars, or that they had any
kind of religion, but after mingling with them for some
. . .
years many
. . . of the Spaniards began to notice among them
divers ceremonies and rites." These ceremonies are called
areitos, or areytos, by the Spanish writers; and from the early
THE ANTILLES 33
Antilles.
after which they offered the bread to the idol, kneeling. The
priests took the gift, blessed, and divided it; and so the feast
ended, but the recipients of the bread preserved it all the year
and held that house unfortunate and liable to many dangers
which was without it."
for of the poems which, Peter Martyr tells us, the sons of
PLATE IV
Others, who have heard the voice among the rocks, make their
zemes of stone; while others, who heard their revelation while
they believe It Is the admiral and those that came with him."
This Is the first of those stories of clothed and bearded strangers
(the beard Is added in some versions), coming to overthrow
the gods and kingdoms of the Indians, which were encountered
In various portions of the New World. So much Importance was
related to zemi —
is applied to the sky-god. It
was hardened by the sun's rays. The First Race of men were
nearly exterminated by a deluge, from which a lucky few
escaped In a canoe. After death the soul of the valiant Carib
ascends to heaven; the stars are CarIb souls. All these are
beliefs which we need not ascribe to Old World suggestion,
for they are found far and wide America; and equally native
In
must be the CarIb notion that each man has three souls one —
in his heart, one In his head, and one In his shoulders
—
though
it Isonly the heart-soul that ascends to paradise at death,
while the other two wander abroad as dangerous and evil
powers. The Islanders possessed also a legend of their origin
or migration from among the Gallbl, their continental rela-
tives, "Galibi" being, apparently, yet another variant of
"Carib." Their ancestor, Kallnago, they said, wearying of life
among his own people, embarked for the conquest of new lands,
and voyage settled In Santo Domingo with his
after a long
they went, they destroyed the men, but spared the women;
and they placed the heads of their enemies In rocky caves that
they might show their sons and their sons' sons these symbols
of the valour of their fathers.According to some tales all
brave Carlbs at death enter a paradise where they forever
wage successful war against the Arawak, while cowards are
condemned In the future world to be enslaved to Arawak
masters.
A more agreeable picture of CarIb nature suggested by
Is
MEXICO
I. MIDDLE AMERICA
the Rio Grande to the southern continent extends
FROM
the great land bridge connecting North and South
America, forming a region which might properly be called
Middle America. This region divides naturally into several
sections. To the north
is the body of Mexico, its coastal lands
II. CONQUISTADORES 4
In Hernandez de Cordova, sailing from Cuba for the
1
5 17
Bahamas, was driven out of his course by adverse gales;
MEXICO 45
Yucatan was discovered; and a part of the coast of the Gulf
of Campeche was explored. Battles were fought, and hard-
your gods."
"He invited us into a tower," continues the chronicler,
"into a part in form Hke a great hall where were two altars
covered with rich woodwork. Upon the altars were reared
two massive with ponderous bodies. The
forms, like giants
first, placed at the right, was, they say, Huichilobos [Huit-
divinity like a page, carried for him a short spear and a buckler
rich in gold and gems. From the neck of Huichilobos hung
masks of Indians and hearts in gold or in silver surmounted
by blue stones. Near by were to be seen burners with incense
of copal; three hearts of Indians sacrificed that very day
burned there, continuing with the incense the sacrifice that
had just taken place. The walls and floor of this sanctuary
were so bathed with congealing blood that they exhaled a
horrid odour.
being so great a prince and so wise as you are, that you have
not perceived in your reflections that your idols are not gods,
but evilly named demons. That Your Majesty may recognize
this and all your priests be convinced, grant me the grace of
finding it good that I erect a Cross upon the height of this
tower, and that in the same part of the sanctuary where are
your Huichilobos and Tezcatepuca, we construct a shrine and
elevate the image of Our Lady; and you will see the fear which
she will inspire in these idols, of which you are the dupes.'
Montezuma replied partly in anger, while the priests made
menacing gestures: 'Sir Malinche, if I had thought that you
MEXICO 49
could offer blasphemies, such as you have just done, I had
not shown you my deities. Our gods we hold to be good; it is
they who give us health, rains, good harvests, storms, victo-
ries, and allthat we desire. We
ought to adore them and
make them sacrifices. What
I beg of you is that you will say
having heard and seeing his emotion, thought best not to reply;
'
terest — make
use of thirteen points on the horizon for the
determination of ceremonial dates, ^
The cosmic and calendric orientation of the Mexicans is
over the twelve heavens and the earth, and are procreators
of all life below. There is some ground for believing that with
this there was associated a belief in twelve corresponding
{Noon)
7. XochipilH Cinteotl
(Flower-God as Maize-God)
6. Teoyaoimqui 8. Tlaloc
(Warrior's Death-God) (God of Rain)
S. Tlazolteotl 9. Quetzalcoatl
(Goddess of Dirt) (as Wind-God)
4. Tonatiuh 10. Tezcatlipoca
(the Sun-God) (the Great God)
3. Chalchiuhtlicue {Day) 11. Mictlantecutli
(Goddess of Water) (God of the Dead)
2. Tlaltecutli 12. Tlauizcalpantecutli
(the Earth as Gaping Jaws) (the Planet Venus)
1. Xiuhtecutli 13. Ilamatecutli
But the gods are patrons not only of the celestial worlds
and of the underworlds, hours of the day and of the night;
they are also rulers and tutelaries of the quarters of earth and
heaven, and of the numerous divisions and periods of time
involved in the complicated Mexican calendar. The in-
upon which are depicted the four day-signs after which the
ing from the jaws of the Earth, and having, on one side, Cin-
teotl, the maize-god, and on the other, Mictlantecutli, the
sponding fertility
—"
already has it changed to quetzal
feathers, already all has become green, already the rainy time
is here!" About the stem of the tree are the circles of the
world-encompassing sea, and on either side of it, springing also
from the body of the goddess, are two great ears of maize.
The attendant or tutelar deities in this image are Quetzal-
coatl ("the green Feather-Snake"), god of the winds, and
Macuilxochitl ("the Five Flowers"), the divinity of music
and dancing. Another series of figures in this same Codex
represent the gods of the quarters as caryatid-like upbearers
of the skies —
Quetzalcoatl of the east; Huitzilopochtli, the
Aztec war-god, of the south; Tlauizcalpantecutli, Venus as
Evening Star, of the west; Mictlantecutli, the death-god, of
the north. All these, however, are only a few of the many ex-
amples of the multifarious cosmic and calendric arrangements
of the gods of the Aztec pantheon.
^^
I. Huitzilopochtli
warriors, and It was here. In 1520, that Cortez and his com-
panions waged their most picturesque battle, fighting their
way up the temple stairs, clearing the summit of some four
hundred Aztec warriors, burning the fanes, and hurling the
Images of the gods to the pavements below. After the Con-
quest the temple was razed, and the Cathedral which still
adorns the City of Mexico was erected on or near a site which
had probably seen more human blood shed for superstition
than has any other In the world.
The name of the war-god, Hultzllopochtll (or UltzUopochtll),
Is curiously Innocent In suggestion
— "Hummlng-BIrd of the
South" (literally, "Hummlng-BIrd-Left-SIde," for in naming
the directions the Nahua called the south the "left" of the
iS'
r
\
MEXICO 6i
^^
2. Tezcatlipoca
"O Lord, very kindly! Thou knowest that we mortals are like
unto children which, when punished, weep and sigh, repenting their
faults. It is thus that these men, ruined by thy chastisements, re-
serving for thy laughter and diversion." And when the king
is dead: "Thou hast given him to taste in this world a few of
Perhaps the inost striking rite in the Aztec year was the
and the priest opening his breast with a single blow, pre-
sented Immediately another youth was
his heart to the sun.
chosen for the following year, for the Tezcatlipoca must never
die. It was said, remarks Sahagun, that this youth's fate
pleasures during life will end their career in grief and poverty;
while Torquemada more grimly comments that "the soul of
the victim went down to the company of his false gods, in hell."
changed into rocks, they fell from a bridge and became stones
in the waters below. Again, in company with Tlacauepan, he
appeared in the market-place of Tollan and caused the infant
Huitzilopochtli to dance upon his hand. The people, crowd-
ing near, crushed several of their number dead; enraged, they
slew the performers and, on the advice of Tlacauepan, fas-
tened ropes to their bodies to drag them out; but all who
touched the cords fell dead. By this and other magical de-
vices great numbers of the Toltec were slain, and their dominion
was brought to an end.
**
3. QUETZALCOATL
with the rejuvenating rains and with the wind, which is the
breath of life. A woman who had become pregnant was
praised by the relatives of her husband for her faithfulness in
grace
— even as It was decreed in the sky by that one who is
great god and the great goddess, assisted by their son, Quet-
zalcoatl." The deity also figures as a world creator, as in the
gonic epochs, during which there rained, not water, but fire
number of babes each year; and after they had put them to
death, they cooked and ate them. ... If the children wept
and shed tears abundantly, those who beheld it rejoiced and
said that this was a sign of rain very near." No wonder the
brave friar turns from his narrative to cry out against such
horror. Yet, he says, "the cause of this cruel blindness, of
which the poor children were victims, should not be directly
imputed to the natural inspirations of their parents, who, in-
deed, shed abundant tears and delivered themselves to the
practice with dolour of soul; one should rather see therein the
hateful and barbarous hand of Satan, our eternal enemy, em-
powers, and she also ruled over one of the "Suns" of the cos-
art mother and sister of the gods, and who alone art worthy
to possess and to give it, to wash from him the evils which he
it
the world was said to have had, and who, as it pleased him,
blew and divided the waters from the heaven and from the
earth, which before him were all intermingled; and he it is
who disposed them as they now are, and so they called him
'Lord of our Bodies' and 'Lord of the Overflow'; and he gave
them all things, and therefore he alone was pictured with the
royal crown. He was
further called 'Seven Flowers' [Chico-
ing from diseases of the skin and eye wore these trophies for
their healing, the period being twenty days. XIpe Totec was
clad in a green garment, but yellow was his predominant
grain, for with all that is horrible about him XIpe Totec is
at bottom a simple agricultural deity. At his festival were
stately areitos, and songs were chanted, one of which is pre-
^*
served :
join thee there where thou wilt be." Similar words were spoken
to the relatives: "Hath this death come because some being
wisheth us ill or mocketh us.'' Nay, it Is because Our Lord hath
willed that such be his end." Then the body was wrapped,
PLATE XI
Green stone image of Mictlantecutli, the skeleton
god of death and of the underworld. The original
is in the Stuttgart Museum.
MEXICO ,
8i
I. COSMOGONY 1
of "the beginning" in the sense of dawn and the east and the
voluntarily all
things." Mixcoatl ("Cloud-Snake"), the tribal
god of the Chichimec and Otomi, is certainly an analogue
of Quetzalcoatl or of Huitzilopochtli, like them figuring as
talons.
Sun, and when one had courageously entered the flames, they
awaited the sunrise, wagering as to the quarter in which he
would appear; but they guessed wrong, and for this they were
condemned to be sacrificed, as they were soon to learn. When
the Sun appeared, he remained ominously motionless; and al-
though Tlotli was sent to demand that he continue his journey,
he refused, saying that he should remain where he was until
they were all destroyed. Citli ("Hare") in anger shot the Sun
with an arrow, but the latter hurled it back, piercing the fore-
head of his antagonist. The gods then recognized their inferior-
ity and allowed themselves to be sacrificed, their hearts being
torn out by Xolotl, who slew himself last of all. Before de-
parting, however, each divinity gave to his followers, as a
sacred bundle, his vesture wrapped about a green gem which
was to serve as a heart. Tezcatlipoca was one of the departed
deities, but one day he appeared to a mourning follower whom
he commanded to journey to the House of the Sun beyond the
waters and to bring thence singers and musical instruments
to make a feast for him. This the messenger did, singing as he
MEXICO 91
but the music was irresistible, and some of them were lured
to follow him back to earth, where they instituted the musical
rites. Such details as the formation of the ceremonial bundles
and the journey of the song-seeker to the House of the Sun
immediately suggest numerous analogues among the wild
tribes of the north. Indicating the primitive and doubtless
ancient character of the myth.
day. With his departure "the Sun of Air" came to its end, and
Tlatonatiuh, "the Sun of Fire," began, so called because It was
expected that the next destruction would be by fire.
Other versions give four Suns as already completed, making
the present into a fifth age of the world. The most detailed
of these cosmogonic myth-records is that given in the Historia
de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas.
According to this document
Tonacatecutli and Tonacaciuatl dwelt from the beginning in
92 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
the thirteenth heaven. To them were born, as to an elder
generation, four gods
— the ruddy Camaxtli (chief divinity
of the Tlascalans) the black Tezcatlipoca, wizard of the night;
;
Hell, and they formed the heavens that are below the thirteenth
storey of the celestial regions, and the waters of the sea, making
in the sea a monster Cipactli, from which they shaped the earth.
The gods of the waters, Tlaloctecutli and his wife Chalchiuh-
tllcue, they created, giving them dom.inion over the Quarters.
The son of the first pair married a woman formed from a hair
of the goddess Xochiquetzal; and the gods, noticing how little
was the light given forth by the half-sun, resolved to make
another half-sun, whereupon Tezcatlipoca became the sun-
bearer — for what we behold traversing the daily heavens
is not the sunitself, but only its brightness; the true sun is
invisible. other gods created huge giants, who could uproot
The
trees by brute force, and whose food was acorns. For thirteen
times fifty-two years, altogether six hundred and seventy-six,
this period lasted — as long as its Sun endured; and it is from
this firstSun that time began to be counted, for during the
six hundred years of the idleness of the gods, while Huitzilo-
pochtli was in his bones, time was not reckoned. This Sun came
to an end when Quetzalcoatl struck down Tezcatlipoca and
became Sun in his place. Tezcatlipoca was metamorphosed
MEXICO 93
When the gods saw this, they created four men, with whose aid
Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl again upreared the heavens,
even as they are today; and these two gods becoming lords of
the heavens and of the stars, walked therein. After the deluge
and the restoration of the heavens, Tezcatlipoca discovered
the art of making fire from sticks and of drawing It from the
heart of flint. The first man, Plltzlntecutll, and his wife, who
had been made of a hair of Xochiquetzal, did not perish In the
flood, because they were divine. A son was born to them, and
the gods created other people just as they had formerly existed.
But since, except for the fires, all was In darkness, the gods re-
solved to create a new Sun. This was done by Quetzalcoatl,
who cast his own son, by Chalchiuhtlicue, into a great fire,
whence he issued as the Sun of our own time; Tlaloc hurled his
son into the cinders of the fire, and thence rose the Moon, ever
following after the Sun. This Sun, said the gods, should eat
hearts and drink blood, and so they established wars that there
deluge and the metamorphosis of the First Men into fish; but
a single pair escaped up in a log or ark. In the
by being sealed
log, and seeing fish about, they built a fire to roast them.
Citlallatonac and Citlallcue, beholding this from the heavens,
said: "Divine Lord, what is this fire.^ Wherefore does this
smoke cloud the sky.?" Whereupon Tezcatlipoca descended in
anger, crying, "What fire is this.?" And he seized the fishes
and transformed them into dogs. Certainly one would relish
an elaboration of this tale; for it would seem that a theft of the
fire must precede —
perhaps a suffering Prometheus may have
followed — the anger of the gods. In another version the
Mexican Noah is named Coxcox, his wife bears the name of
that the chalcuitl was in the shape of a toad; and that whilst
destroying the tower it reprimanded them, inquiring of them
their reason for wishing to ascend into heaven, since It was
them to see what was on the earth." It Is worth
sufficient for
while to remember that the hybrlstic scaling of heaven is no
uncommon motive In American Indian myth, while the moral
of the tale is
honestly pagan
—
"mortal things are the behoof
of mortals," saith Pindar; nor can we fail to see In the green
star (far and wide a great deity of the American Indian nations)
was second in significance only to the sun; Indeed, one of
the most extraordinary achievements of aboriginal American
science was the identification of Phosphorus and Hesperus as
the same star, and the computation of a Venus-period of five
hundred and eighty-four days (the exact period being five
hundred and eighty-three days and twenty- two hours).
98 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
Comets and meteors were regarded as portents; the Milky
Way was the skirt of Citlalicue, or was the white hair of
Mixcoatl of the Zenith; and in the patterns of the stars were
seen the figures that define the topography of the nocturnal
heavens. Sahagun mentions three constellations, which he
vaguely with Gemini, Scorpio, and Ursa Minor;
identifies
ber which Tezozomoc names as those for which the king elect
must keep watch on the night of his vigil. Doubtless many
other star-patterns were observed, but these five seem pre-
dominant. Stansbury Hagar, resolving what he regards as
the Mexican Scorpio into Scorpio and Libra, would see in
square world.
Essentially Mexican calendar is an elaborate day-
the
count. As with many other American peoples, the system of
notation was vigesimal (probably developed from a quinary
mode of counting), and the days were accordingly reckoned
same signs and numerals as the first one hundred and fifteen.
For this reason De Jonghe and some others believe that a
third set of day-signs was employed —
the nine Lords of the
Night, which (since two hundred and sixty is not evenly
divisible by nine) would suffice to differentiate the days
* .A *f It /V- »« T ...
•^0^-^
i.^:-
MEXICO loi
four times thirteen years will the same day-sign and the same
numeral occur on the first day of the year. These divisions of
the years into groups, determined by their signs and numbers,
were of great significance to the Mexican peoples. The sign
which began each group of thirteen years was regarded as
dominant during that period, and as each of these signs was
dedicated to one of the four Quarters, it is to be supposed that
the powers of the ruling sign determined the fortunes of the
periods of ninety, two hundred and fifty, eight, and two hun-
dred and thirty-six days, which he estimated to represent re-
spectively the period of Venus's invisibility during superior
conjunction (ninety days), of its visibility as evening star
(two hundred and fifty days), of its invisibility during in-
ferior conjunction (eight days), and of its visibility as morning
star (two hundred and thirty-six days). The near corre-
nine.
The signs which Inaugurate the Venus periods are Cipactli
104 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
("Crocodile"), Coatl ("Snake"), Atl ("Water"), Acatl
("Reed"), and Olin ("Motion"). But here again the numerals
enter in to complicate the series, so that while the day-signs
which inaugurate the Venus-periods recur in groups of five,
they do not recur with the same numeral until the lapse of
thirteen times five periods. This great cycle of Venus-days,
image in nature than the creation of the Life of Day from the
Chaos of Night at the command of the Lord of Light; (2)
"Great Years," or calendric cycles, formed by calculations of
the synodic periods of sun and moon and wandering stars, or,
as in the curious American instance, mainly from simple day-
counts influenced by a complex symbolism of numbers and
by an awkward notation; (3) the recession of history, back
through the period of record to that of racial reminiscence and
of demigod founders and culture-heroes. Of these three ele-
ments, the first and third constitute the material, while the
second becomes the form-giver —
the measure of the duration
of the acts and scenes of the drama, as it were — adding, how-
ever, on the material side, the portents and omens imaged in
the stars.
The Mexican system of cosmic Suns is a capital
example of
the first element — each Sun introducing a creation or restora-
tion, and each followed by an elemental destruction, while
all are meted out in formal cycles. It is no matter for wonder
that there are varying versions of the order and number of the
long period had been the centre of a power that was, by Mexi-
can standards, to be accounted civilized.
The general characters of Toltec civilization, as tradition
shows It, are those recorded by Sahagun." The Toltec were
clever workmen metals, pottery, jewellery, and fabrics.
In
rotundity of his shrines was due to the presumption that the wind
does not love comers), and that he founded four; in the first
PLATE XV
The temple of Xochicalco, partially restored. The
relief band, of which a section is given for detail,
shows a serpent; a human figure, doubtless a deity,
is seated beneath one of the great coils. After
photographs in the Peabody Museum.
MEXICO 107
states that the reign of each Toltec king was just fifty-two
years, we see simply a statement which identifies calendric with
gods." However, less able in arms than the Invaders, they fell
to no great force.
The Chichimec, according to the prevailing accounts, were
a congeries of wild hunting tribes, cave-dwellers by preference,
who vaguely and imperfectly absorbed the culture that had
preceded them in the Valley of Mexico. Ixtlilxochltl has it
that, under the leadership of a chief named after the celestial
dog Xolotl, they entered the Toltec domain a few years after
the fall of Tollan, peaceably possessing themselves of an almost
deserted land. They were soon followed by related tribes,
MEXICO 109
"O king, inquiet and insecure, when thou art dead, thy vassals
shall be destroyed, scattered in dark confusion; on that day ruler-
ship will no longer be in thy hand, but with God the Creator, All-
Powerful.
"Who hath beheld the palace and court of the king of old, Tezo-
zomoc, how flourishing was his power and firm his tyranny, now
overthrown and destroyed — will hethink to escape? Mockery and
deceit is this world's gift, wherefore let all be consumed!
time, but at last, worm-eaten and dried, the wind of death seized
him, uprooted him, and scattered him in fragments on Earth's soil.
So, also, the olden king Cozastli passed onward, leaving neither
house nor lineage to preserve his memory.
how passed the flowery springtime and the end of the powerful king
Tezozomoc! Ah, who, harkening, will be hard enough to restrain
his tears — for all these varied flowers, these pleasures sweet, wither
and end with this passing life!
sip sweet nectar from fragrant petals. But all is like culled flowers,
that pass from hand to hand, and at the end are cast forth, stripped
and withered!"
V. AZTEC MIGRATION-MYTHS 13
*^,a.>
rr
*=3j
^.i&^
/ L«i
Hi
111
\4 "^
«»-
#>\1,
MEXICO 113
they had just awakened from a dream called life. "Hence the
ancients were in the habit of saying that when-JiienL-die^they
in reality began, to liye^". addressing them: "Lord (or Lady),
awake! the day is coming! Already the first light of dawn
appears! The song of the yellow-plumed birds is heard, and
the many-coloured butterflies are taking wing!" Even at
Tamoanchan a dispersal of the tribes had begun: the Olmac
and the Huastec had departed toward the east, and from them
had come the invention of the intoxicating drink, pulque, and
(apparently as a result of this) the power of creating magical
illusions; for they could make a house seem to be in flames
when nothing of the sort was taking place, they could show
fish in empty waters, and they could even make it appear that
they had cut their own bodies into morsels. But the peoples
associated with the Mexicans departed from Teotihuacan.
Firstwent the Toltec, then the Otomi, who settled in Coatepec,
and Nahua; they traversed the deserts, seeking a
last the
home, each tribe guided by Its own gods. Worn by pains and
famines, they at length came to the Place of Seven Caves,
where they celebrated their respective rites. The Toltec were
the first to go forth, finally settling at Tollan. The people of
Michoacan departed next, to be followed by the Tepanec,
Acolhua, Tlascaltec, and other Nahuatlan tribes, and last of
allby the Aztec, or Mexicans proper, who, led by their god,
came to Colhuacan. Even here they were not allowed to rest,
but were compelled to resume their wanderings, and, passing
from place to place " —
all designated by their names in the
them -bow and. arrows and a snare. This land tliey called
Mimixcoua ("Land of the Cloud-Serpent"); and itwas here
that they changed their name^or the first time calling them-
selves "Mexica" — an
appellation which -Saliagun describes
as formed from that of a chieftain, who was also an inspired
MEXICO 115
rock; and while they gazed the bird ascended to the rising
sun with .2.. -serpent In his talons. This was regarded as a
,
that after he had extended his realm and consolidated his rule,
he decided to send an embassy to the home of his fathers,
especially since he had heard that the mother of Lluitzilo-
pochtli was
still living there. He summoned his counsellor
Tlacaelel, who brought before him an aged man Je^rjied in
the nation's history. "The place you name," said the old
ease, and they were known as Mexitin and Azteca. They had
quantities of duck, heron, cormorants, and other waterfowl,
while birds of red and of yellow plumage diverted them with
song. They had fine large fish; handsome trees lined the shores;
and the streams flowed through meadows under the cypress
and alder. In canoes they fared upon the waters, and they
had floating gardens bearing maize, chile, tomatoes, beans,
and all the vegetables which we now eat and which we have
brought thence. BuJ_after they left this 4slan4-and set foot
on Iaiid^._.a]L thiswas changed the herbs pricked the,m, the
.
:
sto nes wounded, and the fi.elds were fulL Ql---tMstle and of
thuca. Snakes...and v.enomous yermin ..swarme_d eyerywJiere,
whlle^all about were lions and tigers and other dangerous and
huxtful_ beasts. So is It written in my books." Then the king
dispatched his messengers with gifts for the mother of Huit-
zllopochtll. They came first to Coatepec, near Tollan, and
there called upon their demons (for they were magicians) to
guide them; and thus they reached Culhuacan, the mountain
In the sea, where they beheld the fisherfolk and the floating
gardens. The
people of the land, finding that the foreigners
spoke their tongue, asked what god they worshipped, and
when told that It was Hultzilopochtli and that they were
come with a presentfor Coatlicue, his mother, If she yet lived,
man who retained the record of the journey, and they asked
to be taken before the mother of the god to discharge their
duty. The old man, who was the steward of Coatlicue, led
them forward; but the mountain, was like
as they ascended,
a pile of loose sand, in which they sank. "What makes you
so heavy?" asked the guide, who moved lightly on the sur-
face; and they answered, "We eat meat and drink cocoa."
"It is this meat and drink," said the elder, "that prevent you,
from reaching the place where your fathers dwelt; It is this
that has brought death among you. We know naught of
these, naught of the luxury that drags you down; with us all
is simple and meagre." Thereupon he took them
up, and swift
as wind brought them into the presence of Coatlicue. The
goddess was foul and frightful to behold, and like one near
death, for she was in mourning for her son's departure; but
when she heard the message and beheld the rich gifts, she sent
word to her son, reminding him of the prophecy that he had
made at the time of his going forth: how he should lead the
seven tribes into the lands they were to possess, making war
and reducing cities and nations to his service; and how at last
he should be overthrown, even as he had overthrown others,
and his weapons cast to earth. "Then, O mother mine, my
time will be accomplished, and I will return fleeing to thy lap,
but until then I shall know naught save pain. Therefore give
ii8 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
me two pairs of sandals, one for going forth and one for re-
turning, and four pairs of sandals, two pair for going forth
and two for returning." "When he thinks on these words,"
continued the goddess, "and remembers that his mother
yearns after him, bring to him this mantle of nequen and this
breechband." With these gifts she dismissed the messengers;
and as they descended, the steward of Coatlicue explained
how the people of Aztlan kept their youth, for when they
grew old, they climbed the mountain, and the climbing re-
newed their years. So the messengers returned, by the way
they had come, to King Montezuma.
^m
MEXICO 119
interpret the sign; and this King, whose star was In the decline,
took perhaps a grim satisfaction In reading from the portents
the early overthrow of the empire. Montezuma, It Is said, put
the interpretation to test, challenging Nezahualpilli to the
Brother," just as the Earth is "Our Mother" and the Sun "Our
Father." The Water Serpent of the West, the Moon, the Winds,
the Rain, the Lightning, all —
these are familiar deities.
Preuss ^^
attention to the striking emphasis which the
calls
"Our Father Heaven thinks upon his Earth, our Father the
in
Shining One.
There he is, on the other side of the World.
He thinks with his Thought, our Father, the Shining One.
He remembers, too, what he is, our Father, the Shining One."
goddess who gives long life and Is the mother of the armadillo,
the peccary, and the bear; to her belong maize, and squash,
and beans, and sheep; she Is water, likewise, and is a Rain-
Serpent In the east. Rain-Serpent goddesses live in each of the
Quarters
—
she of the east is red, and the flowers of spring are
her skirt; she of the west is white, like a white cloud; blue is
the Rain-Serpent goddess of the south, and to her belong seeds
and singing shamans; while the Rain-Serpent goddess of the
north, whose name means "Rain and Fog hanging in the Trees
and Grass," is spotted. Another goddess is Young Mother
Eagle, the Sun's mother, and it is she who holds the world In
her talons and guards everything; the stars are her dress.
With Grandmother Growth beneath. Young Mother Eagle
above, and the four Rain-Serpent goddesses, the six cardinal
points of the world are defined. It will be observed, too, that
the goddesses are deities of the feminine element, earth and
water; while the gods are divinities of the masculine elements,
fire and air.
standing!"
CHAPTER IV
YUCATAN
I. THE MAYA
American civilization attained its
apogee among
NATIVE
the Maya. This not true in a political sense, for,
is
coast; and the XIus held the inlands. "Between these three
great princely houses of the Cocomes, XIvIs, and Cheles there
were constant struggles and cruel hatreds, and these endure
even now that they have become Christians. The Cocomes say
to the XIvIs that they assassinated their sovereign and stole
his domains; the XIvIs reply that they are neither less noble
nor less ancient and royal than the others, and that far from
"by the revolt of the Itza" it also lost its position and was
finally depopulated in 1442, this disaster being closely followed
Old Empire
I. Archaic Period .... Earliest times c. 360 A. D.
II. Middle Period c. 360 a. d. . C. 460 A. D.
III. Great Period c. 460 a. d. . C. 600 A. D.
New Empire
IV. Colonization Period . . c. 420 a. D C. 620 A. D.
V. Transitional Period c. 620 A. D. C. 980 A. D.
4^.
/COPAN
SAA/
%
^^^dorIc^
YUCATAN 131
had passed, and the signs to be found there, adding that he was
made to traverse a subterranean road which, leading beneath
the Earth and terminating at the roots of the Sky, was none
other than the hole of a snake; and this he entered because he
was "the Son of the Serpent."
Ordonez would like to see in this legend (which he has obvi-
ously accommodated to his desire) a record of historical wander-
ings In and from Old World lands and out of Biblical times.
Yet the narrative, even in Its garbled form. Is clearly a cos-
mologlc myth
— at the least a tale of the sun's journey, and
YUCATAN 133
/ he came to it; he rose from the sea; and his temples and his
tomb were by the seaside. His festival, according to Landa,
fell in Mac (March), when he was worshipped In company
they shared all with the lords, the singers, the priests, and the
dancers; and after this the banners and idols (doubtless house-
hold gods) were taken again to the palace of the prince, whence
each returned to his own house. "They say and hold for certain
that Kukulcan descended from the sky the last day of the feast
and personally received the sacrifices, the penitences, and the
offerings made in his honour."
that their gods did not suffice them; for there was not an animal
nor a reptile of which they did not make images, and they
formed them also in the likeness of their gods and goddesses.
They had some idols of stone, but in small number, and others,
wood, though not so many as of earthenware.
of lesser size, of
The idols in wood were esteemed to such a degree as to be
counted for inheritances, and in them they had the greatest
confidence. They were not at all ignorant that their idols were
PLATE XX
(^)
(B)
(C)
-'^??^l-
VIa^^
'^-tH^-^^'
h" r
- -
;i, / I
-)
,1
-:a?^.
t^'s'^^tV^s 1
ffl
\0.
-
f
1
.^^::(^^
^
,^
1 iv ;?;c-^^S'<^^-^ ,
^,^-
V,
YUCATAN 137
only the work of their own hands, dead things and without
divinity, but they venerated them for the sake of what they
represented and because of the rites with which they had
consecrated them."
Among the deities mentioned by Landa are the Chacs, or
gods, which have no other end than to obtain health and life
and their daily bread"; and he continues with a description of
the abode of blessed souls, a land of food, drink, and sweet
savours, where "there a tree which they call Yaxche, of an
is
Hanhau; and the future life, good or bad, is eternal, for the
life "They hold it as certain that the souls
of souls has no end.
of those who hang themselves go to paradise, there to be re-
ceived by Ixtab, goddess of the hanged"; and many ended
their lives in this manner for but light reason such as a disap-
pointment or an illness.
religion, having as his servants the spirits of the east, the con-
stellations, and the thunder. At the end of the world he will
wear around his body the serpent Haplkern, who will draw
142 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
people to him by his breath and slay them. Nohochakyum is
one of four brothers, apparently lords of the four quarters. As
is usual in such groups, he of the east is pre-eminent. Usukun,
one of the brothers, is a cave-dweller, having the earthquake for
his servant; he is regarded with dread, and his image is set
apart from the other gods. There are a number of other gods
and goddesses of the Lacandones, several of which are clearly
identifiable as the same Maya deities described by Landa
as the
and other early As a whole, the pantheon is a humane
writers.
by Landa and others, and Las Casas also states that the mother
of Chibirias was named HIschen {que nosotros decimos haher
sido Sanf Ana), who must surely be the goddess Ixchel, goddess
of fecundity, invoked at child-birth. The association of the
Bacabs (for there are four of them) with the cross and with
heaven is also Intelligible, since the Bacabs are genii of the
Quarters, where they upheld the skies and guarded the waters,
which were symbolized in rites by water-jars with animal or
144 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
human heads. no doubt, in the Maya region as in
They are,
those who were saved when the earth was destroyed in the
Deluge." In all the Yucatec cities there were, Landa states,
four entrances toward the four points, each marked by two
huge stones opposite one another; and each of the four suc-
cessive years designated by a different New Year's sign was
introduced by rites performed at the stones marking the en-
trance appropriate to the year. Thus Kan years were devoted
to the south. The omen of this year was called Hobnil, and
the festival began with the fabrication of a statue of Kan-u-
Uayeyab which was placed with the stones of the south, while
a second idol, called Bolon-Zacab, was erected at the principal
entrance of the chief's house. When the populace had assembled
they proceeded, along a path well-swept and adorned with
greenery, to the gate of the south, where priests and nobles,
burning incense mingled with maize, sacrificed a fowl. This
done, they placed the statue upon a litter of yellow wood,
"and upon its shoulders an angel —
horribly fashioned and
painted
—
as a sign of an abundance of water and of a good
statue and the other during the unlucky days, smoking them
with incense and with incense mingled with ground maize for
they believed that if they neglected these rites, they would be
subject to the pertaining to this year. When the unlucky
ills
year of the east, and the gate was marked by an idol named
Chac-u-Uayeyab, while the deity presiding at the chief's house
was termed Kinich-Ahau, the meaning of which must be "Lord
of the Solar Eye" if Brasseur's interpretation be correct. War-
dances were a feature of the celebration, doubtless to Sol In-
victus; and offerings made
in the form of yolks of eggs further
Manik, Lamat, Muluc, Oc, Chuen, Eb, Ben, Ix, Men, Cib,
Caban, Eznab, Cauac, and Ahau. Each of these day-signs
(and probably each of the thirteen numbers accompanying
them) had its divinatory significance; and it is quite certain,
from Landa's references alone, that divination formed a promi-
nent use of calendric codices. >|
Kin I day
Uinal 20 days
Tun (18 Uinals) 360 days
Katun (20 Tuns) 7,200 days
Cycle (20 Katuns) 144,000 days
Great Cycle, either 13 Cycles 1,872,000 days
or 20 Cycles 2,880,000 days
tive names for the cycles are unknown, though their symbols
have been determined.
The series of units of time thus composed is that employed
by the Maya of Yucatan, as recovered from the early Spanish
records and the codices. In this region the katun was the
historical unit of prime significance, for both Landa and Cogol-
ludo note the fact that at the end of every katun a graven stone
was erected or laid in the walls of an edifice to record the event.
system, and this the Maya possessed; for they had developed
a positional notation, employing a sign for zero ( ®
), a
the world, the synodic revolutions of the planets, and the re-
currences of their stations with respect to the day-signs, gave
the material for the formation of huge cycles of time which
their mathematical system enabled them to compute. Thus
it Is that Forstemann finds near the end of the Dresden Codex
vast numbers — designated as "Serpent Numbers" because
of the occurrence of the serpent-symbol In connexion with
them — which correspond to such cyclic recombinations of
signs and events.
"In the so-called 'serpent numbers,'" writes Morley,^^ "a
3j is
YUCATAN 153
stroyed by a flood. The third age was that in which the Maya
reigned, but their day likewise passed amid waters of destruc-
tion, to give place to the present age peopled by a mixture of
all the races that have previously dwelt in Yucatan.
It is easy to align these notions with what we know of
Mexican myth, though it is evident that history rather than
play with the stones and trees; and Oxlahun-ti-ku was caught
and they broke his head and buffeted him, and also carried
him on their backs;and they despoiled him of his dragon and
his tizne [black paint or soot]; and they took fresh shoots of
yaxum and white beans, tuberous roots cut up small, and the
heart of small calabash seeds and of large calabash seeds cut
up small, and of black beans cut up small. This first Bolon-
tsac-cab (nine orders of the world) made a thick covering of
seeds and went away to the thirteenth heaven, and the sur-
face of the earth remained formed, and the peaks of the rocks
of the world.
"And the heart of Oxlahun-ti-ku went away, the hearts of
the tuberous roots refusing to go. And there came women
anew. And the tree, the white ymix, was placed standing in
the north; and he placed the supporting poles of the heaven;
and it was said that this tree was the symbol of the universal
destruction." Four other trees, each of a different colour, each
symbol of a destruction of the world, were planted at the re-
maining quarters and the centre; and the form of the world
was then complete. "'The whole world,' said Ah-uuc-chek-
YUCATAN 155
Pokonchi, the Kekchi, and others to the north; and the Chorti
to the east. It is In the lands of these groups, mountain valleys
draining toward the Gulf and the Carribbean, that the ruins of
the monumental cities chiefly lie. At the time of the Conquest
had long been abandoned, though it must not be sup-
their sites
posed that the tribes occupying the land were savage. On the
contrary, they lived In well-built, fortified towns, with fine
and pyramid temples for the service of
residences for the chiefs
the gods but the remains of the cities of the Conquest era have
;
when the Quiche and their kindred entered the land. It appears
CENTRAL AMERICA 157
to have been long deserted: "Only rabbits and birds were here,
they say, when they took possession of the hills and the plains,
they, our fathers and ancestors from Tulan, O my children,"
—
so runs the beginning of the Cakchiquel Annals.^ These Annals^
"
like the Popul Vuh, or Sacred Book," of the kindred Quiche,
contemporary Maya.
The relationship of the two centres of Mayan culture, Yucatec
and Guatemalan, however, more than merely linguistic and
is,
acter, of the genius which marks the whole Mayan race. Bras-
158 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
^
seur de Bourbourg says Popul Fuh that "it is composed
of the
in a Quiche of great elegance, and its author must have been
one of the princes of the royal family," while of the Annals
(which he names Memorial de Tecpan-Atitlan, and which was
indeed, in greater part written by a noble, Don Francisco Er-
nandez Arana Xahila) he declares that "the style is varied and
picturesque and frequently contains passages of high anima-
tion." The translations of both documents quite sustain these
opinions of their literary excellence.
Las Casas, who was as familiar as any man with the general
character of native American culture, and especially with that
of Guatemala of which he was bishop, gives a general charac-
terization of native learning in his chapter {Apologetica His-
princes had passed away, of their works and actions and memo-
rable deeds, good and bad, and of whatever they had governed
for good or ill, and of all that pertains to history, in order that
they might have understanding and remembrance of past
events." Furthermore, he adds, these chroniclers kept count
of the days, months, and years, and "although they had no
yet it Is equally clear to a reader of our day that this is not the
whole cause, that there is in the aboriginal material Itself such
an element of deliberate reflection as appears in the Aztec
rituals recorded by Sahagun and in some of the Incaic frag-
reasons that the longest book of the Popul Vuh is devoted to it.
With the third part the original narrative is resumed, narrating
the creation of the ancestors of the present race of men and the
rise of the Sun which now rules the world; while the fourth and
"Lo, the first word and the first discourse. There was not
yet a man, not an animal; there were no birds nor fish nor cray-
fish; there was no wood, no stone, no bog, no ravine, neither
,1> '
light.
existeth, how the Heart of the Sky existeth — for such is the
"
It is then that the word came to Tepeu and to Gucumatz,
in the shadows and in the night, and spake with Tepeu and
and show its surface, to the end that it be sown, and that the
light of day shine In the heavens and upon the earth; for we
shall receive neither glory nor honour from all that we have
created and formed until human beings exist, endowed with
sentience.' Thus they spake while the earth was formed by
them. It is thus, veritably, that creation took place, and the
earth existed. 'Earth,' they said, and immediately it was
formed.
"Like a fog or a cloud was Its formation into the material
state, when, like great lobsters, the mountains appeared upon
the waters, and in an Instant there were great mountains. Only
l62 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTIIOLOGY
by marvellous power could have been achieved this their resolu-
tion when the mountains and the valleys instantly appeared
with groves of cypress and pine upon them,
"Then was Gucumatz filled with joy. 'Thou art welcome, O
Heart of the Sky, Hurakan, O Streak of Lightning, O Thun-
derbolt!'
'"This that we have created and shaped will have its end,'
they replied.
"And thus first were formed the earth, the mountains, and
the plains; and the course of the waters was divided, the rivulets
running serpentine among the mountains; it is thus that the
waters existed when the great mountains were unveiled.
"Thus was accomplished the creation of the earth when it
was formed by those who are the Heart of the Sky and the
Heart of the Earth; for so those are called who first made fruit-
ful the heaven and the earth while yet they were suspended in
the midst of the waters. Such was its fecundation when they
fecundated It while its fulfilment and its composition were
meditated by them."
So runs the firstchapter of the Quiche Genesis, displaying
at the outset an odd intermingling, which characterizes the
whole work, of the raw actuality of primitive imagination with
the dramatic reflection of the mind of the sage.
The second act of the drama is the creation of denizens, or
rather histrlons, for the stage that is set; and the Quiche narra-
tor, with remarkable ease, casts them In puppet mould, a back-
multiply; thou shalt go upon four feet, and upon four feet
shalt thou live." This is the style In which the creatures of
land and air and water are severally addressed. Nevertheless —
and here is the philosophic touch —
the animals could not
CENTRAL AMERICA 163
day and night, darkening the face of the earth. Moreover, four
great birds were sent to assail these creatures of wood Xecot-
:
they ascended to the roofs of their houses, but the houses col-
lapsed; they wished to climb the trees, but the trees drew away
from them; they sought to enter the caverns, but these closed
against them. All were destroyed, and there remained of their
descendants only the little monkeys that live in the trees, which
is token that "of wood alone their flesh was formed by the
into their flesh, and these were the sole substance of the legs
and arms of man; thus were formed our first fathers, the four
brothers, who were formed of it," whose names were Balam-
Quitze, Balam-Agab, Mahucutah, and Iqi-Balam. "Men they
were; they spake and they reasoned; they saw and they under-
stood; they moved and they had feeling; men perfect and fair,
whose features were human features."
These beings, however, were too highly endowed; they lifted
up their eyes, and their gaze embraced all; they knew all things;
nothing in heaven or earth was concealed from them. The
Maker asked: "Is not your being good.^ Do ye not see.^ Do
ye not understand.? Your speech and your movement, are
they not admirable? Look up, are there not mountains and
plains under the sky.^'" Then the created ones rendered thanks
to their Creator, saying: "Truly, thou gavest us every motion
and accomplishment! We
have received existence, we have
received a mouth, a face; we speak, we understand, we think,
we walk; we perceive and we know equally well what is far and
what isnear; we see all things, great and small, in heaven and
upon the earth. Thanks be to you who have created us, O
Maker, O Former!" But the Makers were not pleased to hear
this. "This is not well! Their nature will not be that of simple
me, Tohil, under the armpit and under the girdle," a euphe-
mism which can refer only to the customary form of human
sacrifice.
Even yet the sun had not appeared, and the race of man was
saddened by the delay. They fasted and performed expiations,
keeping continual watch for the Morning Star, which should
herald the first sunrise. Finally in despair they resumed their
migration: "Alas!" they said, "here we shall never behold the
dawn at themoment when the sun is born to lighten the face
of the earth!" The journey led through many lands until
finallythey came to the mountain of Hacavitz, where the
brothers burned incense which they had brought from "the
CENTRAL AMERICA 167
viper
—
together with the gods Tohil, Avilix, and Hacavltz,
were changed into stone as the sun appeared — "their arms
cramped like the branches of trees and in
. . . all parts they
became stone. Perhaps we should not be in life at this moment
lions, the tigers, the vipers, the
because of the voracity of the
qantis, and the White Fire-Maker of the Night; perchance
our glory would not now exist had not the first animals been
petrified by the sun."
Nevertheless sorrow mingled with joy, for though the ances-
tors of the Quiche had found their mountain home, Illumined
sin of hybris, for he boasted: "I shall be yet again above all
the earth liveth when I step forth from it. am the sun, I am
I
Peabody Museum.
CENTRAL AMERICA 169
coyote, the porcupine, and the peccary, together with the birds.
CENTRAL AMERICA 173
wood; but the third uttered a cry, and his neighbour said:
"What is it, Hun-Came.? What has pricked you " The same .?
the ants to bring the needed flowers from the gardens of Hun-
Came and Vukub-Came. Having failed with this test, the
Xibalbans then dispatched their guests to the House of Cold,
which they survived by kindling pine-knots. The next trial
was the House of Tigers, but its ferocious denizens were diverted
by bones which the brothers cast to them. The House of Fire
was also harmless to them; but in the sixth, the House of Bats,
or House of Camazotz, as its lord was called, they met their
firstdiscomfiture. All night the heroes lay prone, longing for
the dawn; but at last Hunahpu for a moment raised his head,
which was instantly shorn off by the vigilant Camazotz.
Xbalanque, in
desperation, summoned the animals to his
turtle's head, appeared for the last round at the game; and
CENTRAL AMERICA 175
Having now met the ordeals set by the Xibalbans, the brothers
they mounted the funeral pyre and met their death, whereat
all the Xibalbans were filled with joy, crying, "We have tri-
dead, and their bodies laid open; but in a moment they them-
selves were sacrificed, two by two, a chastisement which was
their due." A single prince escaped, begging for pity, while the
176 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
host of their vassals prostrated themselves before their con-
querors.
Then the heroes revealed themselves, disclosing their names
and the names of their fathers, saying, "We are the avengers
of the sufferings of our sires; harken, now
to your doom, ye
of Xibalba! Since your fame and your power are no more, and
ye merit no clemency, your race shall have little rule, and never
again shall ye play the Game of Ball. Yours it shall be to make
objects of burnt clay, pots and pans, and maize-grinders; and
the animals that live in the brushwood and in solitude shall be
your share. All the happy, all the cultivated, shall cease to be
yours; the bees alone will continue to reproduce before your
eyes. Ye, perverse, cruel, sad, wretched, who have done ill,
now lament it!" Thus were degraded those who had been of
bad faith, hypocritical, tyrannical; thus their power was
ruined.
sea, by means of Tluh Tluh, was brought the blood of the ser-
PLATE XXV
Monumental stela, Piedras Negras. This superb
relief shows a divinity with quetzal-plume crest to
whom a priestpresenting the group of bound cap-
is
pent and of the tapir with which the maize was to be kneaded;
the flesh of man was formed of it by the Maker, the Creator;
and well did they, the Maker and the Creator, know him who
was born, him who was begotten; they made man as he was
made, they formed man as they made him; so they tell. There
were thirteen men, fourteen women; they talked, they walked;
they had blood, they had flesh. They married, and one had
two wives. They brought forth daughters, they brought forth
sons, those first men. Thus men were made, and thus the Obsi-
dian Stone was made, for the enclosure of Tulan; thus we came
to where the Zotzils were at the gates of Tulan; arriving, we
were born; coming, we were produced; coming, we gave the
tribute in the darkness, in the night, our sons.' Thus spake
Gagavitz and Zactecauh, O my sons; and what they said hath
not been forgotten. They are our great ancestors; these are
the words with which they encouraged us of old."
These extracts indicate the style of the Annals, full of rep-
divided into seven tribes, and it was from Tulan that, with
idols of wood and of stone, they set out at the oracular com-
mand of the Obsidian Stone. The auguries were mostly evil:
"A bird called 'the guard of the ravine' began to complain
within the gate of Tulan, as we were going forth from Tulan.
*Ye ye shall be lost, I am your portent,' the creature
shall die,
said to us. 'Do ye not believe me? Truly your state shall be
a sad one.'" The owl prophesied similar disaster, and another
bird, the parroquet, "complained in the sky and said, 'I am
your portent; ye shall die.' But we said to the creature, 'Speak
not thus; thou art but the sign of spring. Thou wailest first
when it is spring; when the rain ceaseth, thou wailest.'" They
arrived at the sea-coast, and there a great number perished while
fighting with the dogs, the wasps, fighting with all. One attack,
two attacks we made, and we ourselves were routed; as truly
as they were In the air, they were In the earth; they ascended
and they descended, everywhere against us; and thus they
showed their magic and their sorcery." After this defeat, the
various tribes received the gods which were to be their pro-
tectors. "When we asked each other where our salvation was,
it was said to us by the Quiche men: 'As It thundered and re-
water, was called Gucumatz"; and so on, down the roll. The
tribes then set forth and encounter "the spirit of the forest,
the fire called Zakiqoxol," who kills many men. "Who are
these boys whom we see.?" says the spirit (who, it seems, is a
giant); and Gagavitz and Zactecauh replied: "Let us see what
kind of a hideous mole thou art.? Who art thou? We shall kill
thee. Why is it that thou guardest the road here.?" "Do not
kill me; I, who am here, I am the heart of the forest," and he
asked for clothing. "They shall give to thee wherewith to
clothe thyself," they answered; and "then they gave him
wherewith to clothe himself, a change of garment, his blood-red
cuirass, his blood-red shoes, the dying raiment of Zakiqoxol."
The narrative continues with episodes that may be historical.
There are encounters, friendly and militant, with various
tribes; Zactecauh is killed by falling down a ravine; the wan-
derers are delayed a year by the volcano which Gagavitz con-
zation.
long teeth like those of a dog, a skin darker than that of the
Indians, and glowing eyes," a description which scarcely makes
the voluntary sacrifice plausible. With the coming of the
Christians her appearances were more and more rare.
Of such character were the ideas of the more advanced tribes
of the western coast. The Sumo (of the Ulvan stock) tell a tale
of their origin, reported by Lehmann^^: "Between the Rio
Patuca and the Rio Coco is a hill named Kaun'apa, where is a
rock with the sign of a human umbilical cord. There in olden
time the Indians were born; there is the source of the people.
A great Father, Maisahana, and a great Mother, Ituana, like-
wise existed, the latter being the same as Itoki, whom the
this group represent the last stand of a race that had once ex-
tended far to the north and had played an important part in
the pre-Inca cultures of the central Andes. Beyond the Dia-
neighbours. Nor was this due to the fact that it alone, under
Inca domination, had reached the stage of stable and diversi-
fied social organization; for the archaeology of Peru and
THE ANDEAN NORTH 189
Bolivia shows that the Empire of the Incas was only the last In
a series of central Andean civilizations which it excelled, if at
of the reason given for the sinfulness of incest: the dark spots
on the moon represent a man cast into that damp and freezing
planet to suffer perpetual cold in expiation of incest committed
with his sister —
the very myth that is told in North Green-
land; and the belief that "only nobles have immortal souls" (or,
more that they alone enjoy a paradise) is cited to explain
likely,
so that the poor beast doth not fall a prey to the worms,"
is the command of the King of the Tapirs to the unlucky hunter
says that along with this god the Sun, the Moon, and the
Morning Star were worshipped, as well as divinities of wood
and stone which presided over the elements and the sowings
{sementeras).
The allusion to deities of the sementeras is interesting in
connexion with the Bribri and Brunka (or Boruca) myths,
published by Pittier de Fabrega. According to these tribes of
Indians, men and
animal kinds were originally born of seeds
kept in baskets which Sibu entrusted to the lesser gods; but
the evil powers were constantly hunting for these seeds, en-
liminary for the creation of men, which Sibu desired and Jaburu
opposed. The almighty god chose green pods, the evil one ripe
pods; and at the third throw the pod broke in Jaburu's hand,
mankind being then born from the A
third legend, of a
seed.
III. EL DORADO
Not the quest of the Golden Fleece itself and the adventures
of the Argonauts with clashing rocks and Amazonian women
are so filled with extravagance and peril as is the search for El
Dorado.^ The legend of the Gilded Man and of his treasure
city sprang from the soil of the New World in the very dawn of
its discovery
—whether wholly in the imaginations of con-
quistadores dazzled with dreams of gold, or partly from some
custom, tale, or myth of the American Indians it is now im-
possible to say. In form it told of a priest, or king,
its earlier
wound. In 1
53 1 Diego de Ordaz conducted an expedition guided
by a lieutenant who claimed to have been entertained in the
city of Omoa by El Dorado himself; in 1536-38 George of
gota in the realm of the Chibcha. Possibly the myth may refer
to the practices of one of the nations conquered by the Muyscan
Zipas before the coming of the Spaniards, and legendary even
at that time; for as the tale is told, it seems to describe a cere-
more abundance.
The Zipa of Bogota, at the period of the conquest, was the
most considerable of the native rulers in what is now Colombia,
having an empire only less in extent than those of the Peruvian
Incas and of the Aztec Kings. He also was a recent lord, en-
gaged at the very time of the coming of the whites in extend-
ing his power over neighbouring rulers; it is probable that
Guatavita, east of Bogota had fallen to the Zipa not many
decades before the conquest and this Guatavita is supposed
to have been the scene of the rite of El Dorado; in any case
it had remained a famous Tunja was another power
shrine.
to the east of Bogota declining before the rising power of
the Zipas, its Zaque (as the Tunjan caciques were called)
being saved from the Zipa's forces by the arrival of the
Spaniards.
Besides these — the Chibcha proper^ — there were in Colom-
bia in the sixteenth century other civilized peoples, akin in
culture and language, whose chief centres were in the elongated
Cauca valley paralleling the Pacific coast. Farthest north were
the tribes in the neighbourhood of Antioquia — theTamahi and
PLATE XXVII
{A)
{B)
preserve the cult of the gods; while the pair assumed the form
of serpents. In which they were supposed sometimes to reappear
to their worshippers.
The belief that the ancestors of men Issued from a lake or
peoples.
Other Colombian legends of the origin of men include the
Pijaos belief, recorded by Fray Simon, that their ancestors
had Issued from a mountain, and the tradition of the Muzo —
western neighbours of the Chibcha — that
a shadow. Are,
formed faces from sand, which became men and women when
he sprinkled them with water. A true creation-story (as dis-
tinguished from tales of origin through generation) was told
also by the people of Tunja. In the beginning all was darkness
and fog, wherein dwelt the caciques of RamlriquI and of
Sogamozo, nephew and uncle. From yellow clay they fashioned
men, and from an herb they created women; but since the
world was unillumined, after enjoining worship upon their
still
: ii i •
J -^ r 1.
PLATE XXVIII
1. Ceremonial dish of black ware with monster
or animal forms found near Anoire, Antioquia.
The original is in the Museum of the University of
Nebraska.
was danced about the blue sky-man, while all sang how human
beings are mortal and must change their bodies into dust with-
out knowing what shall be the fate of their souls.
Fray Simon relates an episode of these same Indians
which is enlightening both as to the missionary and as to
the aboriginal conception of the powers that be. After the
missionary had laboured among the natives of
first Tunja and
Sogamozo, "the Demon there
began to give contrary doctrines;
and among other matters he sought to discredit the teaching
them that such a thing had not yet
of the Incarnation, telling
taken place. Nevertheless, it should happen that the Sun, as-
suming human flesh in the body of a virgin of the pueblo of
Guacheta, should cause her to bring forth that which she
should conceive from the rays of the sun, although remaining
virgin. This was bruited throughout the provinces, and the
cacique of the pueblo named, wishing to prove the miracle, took
two virgins, and leading them forth from his house every dawn,
caused them to dispose themselves upon a neighbouring hill,
where the first rays of the sun would shine upon them. Con-
tinuing this for some days,it was granted to the Demon by
as she said, by the Sun." At the end of nine months the girl
Sun was older than the first preaching of the Incarnation, and
that Spanish ears had too eagerly misheard some tale of rites
or myths which must have been analogous to the Inca legends of
descent from the Sun and to their consecration of virgins to
his worship.
202 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
Like the other civilized American nations the Chibcha pre-
served the tradition of a bearded old man, clothed in long
robes who came from the east to instruct them in the arts of
life and to raise them from primeval barbarism; and like other
churchly writers Fray Pedro Simon regarded this as evidence
of the preaching of the Gospel by an apostle. Nemptereque-
places the coming of the giants about the time of the Christian
raques not only marks the site of their first power, but bears
the name of the Cara. These invaders are said to have come
PLATE XXIX
Scene from a vase, Truxlllo, showing balsa. The
drawing is in the Chimu style. After Joyce, South
American Archaeology, page 126.
THE ANDEAN NORTH 207
people, and after dwelling for a time upon the coast, they
advanced into the interior until, about 980 A. D., according to
Velasco, they eventually established their power in the neigh-
bourhood of Quito, where the Scyri (as the Cara king was
called) became a powerful overlord. From that time until
Quito was subdued by the Incas Tupac Yupanqui and Huayna
Capac in the latter part of the fifteenth century, the Scyris
ters, having at the head of their pantheon the Sun and the
Moon who had guided them on their journeys; and he describes
the temples built to these deities on two opposite hills at
Quito, that to the Sun having before the door two pillars
which served to measure the solar year, while twelve lesser
columns indicated the beginning of each month. Elsewhere In
their empire were the usual local cults, —
worship of animals
and elements, with tales of descent from serpentlform water-
spirits and with adoration of fish and of food animals
—
while on the coast the Sea was a great divinity, and the islands
of Puna and La Plata were the seats of famous sanctuaries,
at the former shrine prisoners being sacrificed to Tumbal, the
war-god, by having their hearts torn out. The neighbouring
coast was the seat of the veneration of the great emerald
(mentioned by Cleza de Leon and Garcllasso de la Vega)
which was famous as a god of healing; and it is altogether
probable that the Scyris brought their regard for the emerald
from this region In which the gem abounded, though this
2o8 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
may well have been merely a local Intensification of that
belief in the magic of green and blue gems which is broadcast
in the two Americas.
Besides the stories of the giants and the Cara, there Is a
third legend of an ancient descent of seamen upon the equa-
torial coast. Balboa ^^ is the narrator of the tale of the coming
of Naymlap and Lambeyeque, a few degrees
his people to
south of Cape Santa Elena, and the story which he tells is given
with a minuteness as to name and description that leaves
no doubt of Its native origin. At a very remote period there
arrived from the north a great fleet of balsas, commanded by
a brave and renowned chieftain, Naymlap. His wife was
called Ceterni, and a list of court officers is given —
Pitazofi,
the trumpeter; NinacoUa, warden of the chief's litter and
throne; NInagentue, the cup-bearer; Fongaslgde, spreader of
shell-dust before the royal feet (a function which leads us to
suspect that the royal feet, for magic reasons, were never to
touch the earth); Ochocalo, chief of the cuisine; Xam, master
of face-paints; and LlapchilullI, charged with the care of
vestments and plumes. From this account of the entourage,
one readily Infers that the chieftain is more than man, him-
self a divinity; and, indeed, Balboa goes on to say that im-
mediately after the new comers had landed, they built a
temple, named Chot, wherein they placed an idol which they
had brought and which, carved of green stone in the image
of the chief, was called Llampallec, or "figure of Naymlap."
After a long reign Naymlap disappeared, leaving the report
that, given wings by his power,he had ascended to the skies;
and his followers. In their affliction, went everywhere in search
of their lord, while their children inhabited the territories which
had been acquired. Cium, the successor of Naymlap, at the
end of his reign, immured himself In a subterranean cham-
ber,where he perished of hunger in order that he might leave
the reputation of being immortal; and after Cium were nine
other kings, succeeded by Tempellec, who undertook to move
THE ANDEAN NORTH 209
coast, may have here received Its especial Impetus from the
colour and translucency of the stone, suggesting the green
waters of the ocean.
CHAPTER VII
THE ANDEAN SOUTH
I. THE EMPIRE OF THE INCAS ^
by the snow and the wind, which never ceases to blow. The
third range comprises the sandy deserts from Tumbez to the
other side of Tarapaca, In which there is nothing to be seen
but sand-hills and the fierce sun which dries them up, without
water, nor herb, nor tree, nor created thing, except birds which,
by the gift of their wings, wander wherever they list. This
kingdom, being so vast, has great deserts for the reasons I
make their villages with rows of stones roofed with straw, and
live healthily and in comfort. Thus the mountains of the Andes
form these dales and ravines in which there are populous vil-
lages, and rivers of excellent
water flow near them, some of the
rivers send their waters to the South Sea, entering by the sandy
deserts which I have mentioned, and the humidity of their
water gives rise to very beautiful valleys with great rows of
trees. The two or three leagues broad, and great
valleys are
in them,
quantities of algoroha trees [Prosopis horrida] grow
which flourish even at great distances from any water.
Wherever there are groves of trees the land is free from
sand and very fertile and abundant. In ancient times these
valleys were very populous, and still there are Indians in them,
though not so many as in former days. As it never rains in
these sandy deserts and valleys of Peru, they do not roof their
houses as they do in the mountains, but build large houses of
adobes [sun-dried bricks] with pleasant terraced roofs of matting
to shade them from the sun, nor do the Spaniards use any other
roofing than these reed mats. To prepare their fields for sowing,
they lead channels from the rivers to irrigate the valleys, and
the channels are made so well and with so much regularity
that all the land is irrigated without any waste. This system
of irrigation makes the valleys very green and cheerful, and
they are full of fruit-trees both of Spain and of this country.
At all times they raise good harvests of maize and wheat, and
of everything that they sow. Thus, although I have described
Peru as being formed of three desert ridges, yet from them,
by the will of God, descend these valleys and rivers, without
which no man could live. This is the cause why the natives
were so easily conquered, for if they rebelled they would all
perish of cold and hunger. Except the land which they inhabit,
the whole country is full of snowy mountains, enormous and
very terrible."
Cieza de Leon's description brings vividly before the imagina-
tion the physical surroundings which made possible the evolu-
212 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
tlon and the long history of the greatest of native American
empires. Divided from one another by towering mountains
and inhospitable deserts, the tribes and clans that filtered into
some remote period were compelled to develop in
this region at
relative isolation; while, further, the conditions of existence
were such that the inhabitants could not be nomadic huntsmen,
nor even fishermen. Along the shores are vestiges of ancient
shell-heaps, indicative of utterly primitive fisher-folk, and the
sea always remained an important source of food for the coastal
only for food and wool, but also as beasts of burden — is shown
PLATE XXX
Machu Picchu, in the valley of the Urubamba,
north of 'Cuzco. These ruins of an ancient Inca
city were discovered by Hiram Bingham, of the
Yale University and National Geographical Society
expedition, in 191 1, and are by him identified with
the "Tampu-Tocco" of Inca tradition (see pages
216-18, and Plate XXXVIII). From photograph,
courtesy of Hiram Bingham, Director of the Yale
Peruvian Expedition.
> "'
"v. ^
, #;-^v.%
.*.
^
-^--^1^, h'^'
•k" .
-^ , '^v*A^:^m: ^z*"
::j?f*
^' 'J^t'Alf
1 ^'4.«m*js
THE ANDEAN SOUTH 213
formerly viewed with much distrust, chiefly for the reason that
the kings of the pre-Inca dynasties recorded by Monteslnos
are almost without exception unnamed by earlier and prime
authorities on Peruvian history (Including Garcilasso de la
Vega and Cieza de Leon). Recent discoveries, however, both
scholarly and archaeological, have brought a new plausibility
to Monteslnos's lists, and It appears probable that he derived
them from the lost works of Bias Valera, one of the earliest
men In the field, known to have had exceptional opportuni-
ties for a study of native lore; while at the same time the
period the Ideas of the coast and those of the highlands met
and Interchanged: the art of Tiahuanaco Is reflected In motive
Nasca repeat the bizarre decora-
at Truxillo, while the vases of
Chavin de Huantar. The hoary sanctity
tion of the monolith of
of the great temple of Pachacamac was such that its Inca
2i6 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
conqueror adopted the god into his own pantheon; and it was
just here, at the Yunca shrine of Pachacamac, that Uhle
found evidence of a series of culture periods leading to a con-
siderable antiquity. The Indigenous coastal art had already
Of the one hundred and two kings In these lists, the last
ten form the Inca dynasty (a group with respect to which
Monteslnos Is In essential agreement with other chroniclers),
whose beginning Is placed 1 100-1200 a. d.; back of these are
the twenty-eight lords of Tampu-Tocco; and still earlier the
sixty-four rulers of the ancient empire, forty-six of them
forming the amauta (or priest-king) dynasty which followed
after the primal line of eighteen Sons of the Gods. Were this
scheme of regal succession followed out in extenso the begin-
nings of the Megallthic of the highlands should fall
Empire
near the beginning of the first millenlum before Christ, and that
of the Tampu Tocco dynasty in the early years of our Era.
Archaeological and other considerations lead, however, to esti-
mates somewhat more conservative, placing the culmination
of the early empire In the first centuries of the Christian era,
and the sojourn at Tampu Tocco from about 600-1100 a. d.^
The Inca dynasty, Cuzco toward 1200 a. d.,
established at
was the creator of the great empire which the Spaniards found,
and Its record Is the traditional history of Peru, recounted by
Garcllasso and Cleza. According to the legend, the Inca tribes
had come to Cuzco from a place called Tampu-Tocco, a city
of refuge in an Inaccessible valley, where for centuries their
ancestors had lived in seclusion, the cause of the retirement
writing was lost in this debacle, and that the later art of reckon-
ing by quipus, or knotted and coloured cords, was invented at
Tampu-Tocco. Here, in a city free from pests and unmoved
by earthquakes, the Kings of Tampu-Tocco reigned in peace,
going occasionally to Cuzco to worship at the ancient shrine,
over which, with its neighborhood, some shadowy authority
was preserved. Finally a woman, Siyu-Yacu, of noble birth
and high ambition, caused the report to be spread that her
son, Rocca, had been carried off" to be instructed by the Sun
himself, and a few days later the youth, appearing In a garment
glittering with gold, told the people that corruption of the
ancient religion had caused their fall, but that their lost glories
should be restored to them under his leadership. Thus Rocca
became the first of the Incas, Cuzco was restored as capital,
and the new empire started on a career which was to exceed
the old in grandeur.
With the removal to Cuzco, Tampu-Tocco became no more
than a monumental shrine where priests and vestals preserved
the rites of the old religion and watched over the caves made
sacred by the bones of former monarchs. The native writer
Andes, but of the four culture centres which have been most
studied some traits are decipherable. Two of these centres
are montane, two coastal. Of the former, the Megallthic
valleys
— while
the twelve adjoining southern valleys, from
sky"
— a statement which is certainly In tone with a totemic
interpretation.
In addition to the special idols of each province, says Garci-
lasso,^° all the peoples of the littoral from Truxillo to Tarapaca
adored the ocean in the form of a fish, out of gratitude for
the food that it yielded, naming it Mama Cocha ("Mother
every toil and difficulty they invoked this deity for aid.
One of the decorative designs that occurs and recurs on the
vases of both the Chimu and Chincha regions in the char- —
acteristic style of each
—
the plumed serpent. What is
is
eagle, so in South America the condor and the falcon are the
PLATE XXXIII
Embroidered figure from a Nasca robe in the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Nasca fabrics repre-
sent the highest achievement in textile art of aborig-
inal America. Figures of the type here shown are
repeated with minor variations, each, no doubt, of
symbolic significance, in a chequered or "all-over"
design. The deity represented may be totemic,
but obviously belongs to the sam.e group as those
shown in such pottery paintings as are represented
in Plates XXXII and XXXIV.
THE ANDEAN SOUTH 227
1608; but brief and fragmentary though this treatise be, ending
abruptly with the heading of a Chapter VHI, which was
never written, throws a curiously suggestive light upon the
it
right to prey; and upon those who should slay the condor he set
the curse of death. Next he met a fox, but the fox told him his
quest was vain; so he cursed the fox, telling it that it must hunt
at night and be slain by men. The lion next promised him well,
and he gave the lion power over prey and honour among men.
The falcon was similarly blessed for fair promises, and parrots
cursed for their ill omen.
Arrived at the seaside, Coniraya
discovered the vanity of his pursuit, but he was easily con-
soled; for on the beach he met two daughters of Pachacamac.
In the absence of their mother, who was visiting CavIUaca
In the sea, they were guarded by a great serpent, but
Coniraya quieted the serpent by his wisdom. One of the
maidens flew away In the form of a dove, whence their —
mother was called Urplhuachac, "Mother of Doves"; but the
other was more complaisant. "In those days It is said that
there were no fishes in the sea, but that this Urplhuachac
reared a few in a small pond. Coniraya was enraged that
a wind blew, for until that time there had been no wind. These
little maize, one grain fell on her skirt, as happens every day.
She gave it to a man who ate it, and afterward she committed
adultery with him. This is the reason that the rich man is sick,
and a serpent is now hovering over his beautiful house to eat
PLATE XXXIV
Vase from Nasca representing a deity with
serpentiform body. Tiie commonest motive in
ing, wherein all the animals aided him at night. Thus having
vanquished his brother-in-law, Huathiacuri in turn issued a
challenge to a dance, ending it in a wild race during which he
transformed the brother-in-law Into a deer and his wife Into
rock. The deer some time by devouring people, but
lived for
durablllty.
few other roots, along with droves of hardy llamas and alpacas,
form the reliance for subsistence of a population which at
best is sparse. Yet in the midst of this plateau are ruins
abyss
— profundity. The whole meaning of the words would
be, 'The splendour, the foundation, the creator, the infinite
that they live in health and peace. Thou who art in the
may
high heavens, and among the clouds of the tempest, grant
this with long life, and accept this sacrifice, O Creator!"
In other prayers Viracocha is represented as creator of the sun,
and hence as supreme over the great national god of the Incas;
and in the which Molina describes, Viracocha (the
rites
By thee, O Uira-cocha!
They all travel
To the assigned place;
They all arrive
At their destined ends,
Whithersoever thou pleasest.
Thy royal sceptre
Thou holdest.
Oh hear me!
Oh choose me!
Let it not be
That I should tire,
That I should die."
teaching the natives with much love and calling them all his
sons and daughters. As he went through the land, he per-
formed many miracles. The sick were healed by his touch.
He spoke all languages better than the natives." They called
him, Salcamayhua says, Tonapa or Tarapaca (" Tarapaca
means an eagle"), associating these names with that of Vlra-
cocha; "but was he not the glorious apostle, St. Thomas?"
Many tales are told of the miracles performed by Tonapa,
among others the story, which Avila narrates" of Pariacaca,
of the overwhelming by flood of a village, the inhabitants
of which had abused him; and similar legends in which the
offenders were transformed into stones. "They further say
that this Tonapa, in his wanderings, came to the mountains
of Caravaya, where he erected a very large cross; and he
carried it on his shoulders to the mountain of Carapucu,
where he preached in a loud voice, and shed tears." In 1897
Bandeller ^^
visited the village of Carabuco, on Lake Titicaca,
and there saw the ancient cross, known for more than three
centuries, which tradition associates with pre-Columbian
times. "The meaning of Carapucu," Salcamayhua continues,
"is when a bird called pucu-pucu sings four times at early
dawn." May there not be here a clue to the meaning both of
the myth and of the emblem? At dawn, when the herald birds
first sing, the four quarters of the world, of which the cross is
sented as the creator, and the story follows the main plot of
240 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
the genesis narratives known to the civilized nations of both
Americas —
a succession of world aeons, each ending in cata-
brighter orb, the sun threw a handful of ashes over his rival's
face, thus giving the shaded colour which the moon now pre-
sents. VIracocha, we are told, was assisted by three servants,
one of whom, Taguapaca, rebelled against him; for this he was
bound and set adrift upon the lake (an event which, in a
different form,Is
given by Salcamayhua as a part of the perse-
cution of Tonapa); and then, taking his two remaining ser-
vitors with him, the deity "went to a place now called Tlahua-
nacu . . . and In this place he sculptured and designed on a
professed motive
— professed, that is, in Inca tradition, es-
them and from heaven he sent down to earth a son and daughter
to instruct them knowledge of our Father, the Sun, that
in the
adoring Him, they might adopt Him as their God; and also
to give them precepts and laws by which to live as reasonable
and men, and to teach them to dwell in houses and
civilized
Father, the Sun, placed his two children in the lake of Titicaca,
saying to them that they might go where they pleased and that
at every place where they stopped to eat or sleep they were to
thrust into the ground a sceptre of gold which was half a yard
prayer and persuasion, but that arms and power should form a
part, at least with those who were stubborn and pertinaceous."
Having assembled an army, the Inca crossed the border,
and entering a province called Cana, he sent messengers to
the inhabitants, "requiring them to submit to and obey the
child of the Sun, abandoning their own vain and evil sacrifices,
and bestial customs
" —
a formula that became thenceforth
the Inca preliminary to a declaration of war. The Cana sub-
mitted, but, the chronicler says, when he passed to the province
of Ayaviri, the natives "were so stubborn and rebellious that
neither promises, nor persuasion, nor the examples of the
other subjugated aborigines were of any avail; they all pre-
ferred to die defending their liberty." And so fell many a
province, after vainly endeavouring to protect its native gods,
as the realm of the Incas grew, always advancing under the
altered that the Spaniards found the great Temple of the Sun
at Cuzco.
It would appear, indeed, that the action of Huascar was
only a final step in the rise of the solar cult to pre-eminence
in Peru. Doubtless the sun had been a principal deity from
an early period, but its close relation to the Inca clan made
great pow-er that, with stones hurled from his sling, he split the
hills and hurled them up to the clouds") was the first to excite
the envy of his brothers; and on the pretext that certain royal
treasures had been forgotten In a cave of Tampu-Tocco, he was
sent back to secure them, accompanied by a follower who had
secret Instructions from the brothers to immure him In the cave,
once he was inside. This was done, and though Ayar Cachi made
the earth shake in hiseff'orts to break through, he could not
so, sat upon the stone, and himself became stone, crying: "O
side.' When Ayar Auca heard the words of his brother, opening
his wings, he flew to that place which Manco Capac had pointed
out; and seating himself there, he was presently turned into
stone, being made
the stone of possession. In the ancient
language of this valley the heap was called co%co^ whence the
site has had the name of Cuzco to this day."
Titicaca, while their connexion with the Incas, after the dynasty
of Tampu-Tocco, would be, as it were, but a natural telescoping
of ancient myth and later history, adding to Inca prestige.
In Inca lore there are other legends —
the tale of the prince
who was stolen by his father's enemies and who wept tears of
blood, by this portent saving his life; the legend of the virgin
of the Sun who loved a pipe-playing shepherd and of their
transformation Into rocks; the story of Ollantay, the general,
who loved the Inca's daughter, preserved in the drama which
Markham has translated; and along with these are many frag-
ments of creation-stories and aetiological myths chronicled
by the early writers. History and poetic fancy combine in
these to give materials into which are woven beliefs and prac-
tices farmore ancient than the Inca race, just as Hellenic myth
contains distorted reflections of the pre-Greek age of the Aegean.
peoples comes from tribes and nations of the second and third
groups
—from the Andeans whose myths have been sketched
in preceding chapters, and from the peoples of the tropic
forests. The region inhabited by the latter group is too vast
to be treated as a simple unit; nor is there, in the chaotic
intermixture of tongues and tribes, any clear ethnic demarca-
tion of Ideas. In default of other principle, it Is appropriate
and expedient, therefore, to follow the natural division of the
territory into the geographical regions broadly determined by
the great river-systems that traverse the continent. These
256 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
are three: in the north the Orinoco, with its tributaries, drain-
are innumerable . . .
briefly . . . there is the seated fact that
all are idolaters, and there is the particular fact that all abhor
and greatly fear the devil, whom they call Iboroquiamio."
Minds of a scientific stamp see the matter somewhat differ-
ently. "The
natives of the Orinoco," Humboldt declares,^
"
know no other worship than that of the powers of nature; like
the ancient Germans they deify the mysterious object which
excites their simple admiration {deorum nominibus appellant
secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident).^^ From the point
of view of an ethnologist of the school of Tylor, im Thurn de-
scribes the religion of the Indians of Guiana Having no belief :
Spirit of Guiana:
'
Kononatoo Maker").
mlominagatoo("our
,^j ,,. .
f
VVarrau-Wapiana:
^ K •
. /
•
1 n
[ (meaning unknown).
covered that the human race had become wicked and corrupt;
wherefore he deprived them of everlasting life, leaving among
them serpents, lizards, and other vermin. Wurekaddo (" She
Who Works Dark") and Emisiwaddo ("She Who Bores
in the
the Manitou, the Great Spirit, that regulates the seasons and
favours the harvests. Along with Cachimana there Is an evil
principle, lolokiamo, less powerful, but more artful, and in
particular more active." On the whole, this characterization
represents the consensus of observation of traveller, missionary,
and scientist from Columbian days to the present and for the
wilder tribes of the whole of both South and North America.
26o LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
There isgood being, the Great Spirit, more or less remote from
a
one type of the spirits of evil. Others are the Yauhahu and
Orehu (Arawak names for beings which are known to the other
tribes by other titles). The Yauhahu are the familiars of
wak, walking besides the water and brooding over the sad case
of his people, beheld an Orehu rise from the stream, bearing
in her hand a branch which he planted as she bade him, its
fruit being the calabash, till then unknown. Again she ap-
give a wider insight into the ideas and customs of a people. The
theme of the tale is very clearly the coming of evil as the conse-
262 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
quence of a woman's deed, although the motive of her action
is not mere curiosity, as in the tale of Pandora, but the more
say, the world was quite other than what it is today: the trees
were forever animals lived in perfect harmony,
in fruit; the
and the little agouti played fearlessly with the beard of the
jaguar; the serpents had no venom; the rivers flowed evenly,
without drought or flood; and even the waters of cascades
glided gently down from the high rocks. No human creature
had as yet come into life, and Adaheli, whom now we invoke as
God, but who then was called the Sun, was troubled. He de-
scended from the skies, and shortly after man was born from
the cayman, born, men and women, in the two sexes. The
females were all of a ravishing beauty, but many of the males
had repellent features; and this was the cause of their dis-
persion, since the men of fair visage, unable to endure dwelling
with their ugly fellows, separated from them, going to the West,
while the hideous men went
to the East, each party taking
the wives whom they had chosen.
Now in the tribe of the handsome Indians lived a certain
young man, Maconaura, and his aged mother. The youth was
altogether charming
—
tall and graceful, with no equal in hunt-
ing and fishing, while all men brought their baskets to him for
the final touch; nor was his old mother less skilled in the mak-
hammocks, preparation of cassava, or brewing of tapana.
ing of
They lived in harmony with one another and with all their
tribe, suffering neither from excessive heat nor from foggy
chill, and free from evil beasts, for none existed in that region.
THE ORINOCO AND GUIANA 263
late; again the fish were devoured, and the net was broken.
With cuckoo as guard he fared better, for when he heard the
pon! pon! which was this bird's signal, he arrived In time to
send an arrow between the ugly eyes of a cayman, which dis-
appeared beneath the waters with a glou! glou! Maconaura
repaired his basket-net and departed, only to hear again the
signal, pon! pon! Returning, he found a beautiful Indian
maiden in tears. "Who are you.'*" he asked. "Anuanaitu,"
she replied, "Whence come you?" "From far, far." "Who
are your kindred?" "Oh, ask me not that!" and she covered
her face with her hands.
The maiden, who was little more than a child, lived with
Maconaura and his mother; and as she grew, she increased in
beauty, so that Maconaura desired to wed her. At first she re-
fused with tears, but finally she consented, though the union
lacked correctness in that Maconaura had not secured the
consent of her parents, whose name she still refused to divulge.
For a while the married pair lived happily until Anuanaitu was
seized with a great desire to visit her mother; but when Ma-
conaura would go with her, she, in terror, urged the abandon-
ment of the trip, only to find her husband so determined that
he said, "Then I will go alone to ask you in marriage of your
kin." "Never, never that!" cried Anuanaitu; "That would
be to destroy us all, us two and your dear mother!" But Ma-
conaura was not to be dissuaded, for he had consulted a peaiman
who had assured him that he would return safely; and so he
set forth with his bride.
After several weeks their canoe reached an encampment,
and Anuanaitu said "We are arrived; I will go in search of my
:
mother. She will bring to you a gourd filled with blood and
264 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
raw meat, and another filled with beltiri [a fermented liquor]
and cassava bread. Our lot depends on your choice." The
young man, when his mother-in-law appeared, unhesitatingly
took the beltiri and bread, whereupon the old woman said,
"You have chosen well; I give my consent to your marriage,
but I fear that my husband will oppose it strongly." Kai-
koutji ("Jaguar") was the husband's name. The two women
went in advance to test his temper toward Maconaura's suit;
but his rage was great, and it was necessary to hide the youth
in the forest until at last Kaikoutji was mollified to such a
her of his condition: if the owl came, she would know him
lost. Arrived at the home of Anuanaitu, he was met by his
raising the cup of tapana to her lips, she cried: "Who has ex-
tinguished the light of my son? Who has sent him into the
valley of shades? Woe woe
! to him ! . . . Alas you see in me,
!
joice Thou art happy, now, for thou art avenged in the blood of
!
thy murderers! Ah, yes, thou art well avenged!" During this
Anuanaitu felt in her soul a dread conflict, the call of love
struggling with the call of duty; but at the words, "avenged
in blood," she restrained herself no longer, and throwing her-
selfupon the old woman, she drew her tongue from her mouth,
striking it with venomous poison; and leaning over her agonized
victim, she spoke: "The cayman which your son killed beside
the basket-net was my brother. Like my father, he had a cay-
man's head. would pardon that. My father avenged his
I
savage seems to hold not only between tribe and tribe of men,
but also between tribe and tribe of animals; the tapana feasts
In which men become Inspired; or again, such mythic and
the great spirit whom no man hath seen. They, at that time,
were endowed with the gift of speech. Sigu, the son of
all
greedily descending into the food-rich mud, had his legs, till
then respectable, so devoured by ants that they have ever
since been bonily thin; the bush-fowl snapped up the spark of
fire which Sign laboriously kindled, and got his red wattle for
his greed; while the alligator had his tongue pulled out for
lying (it is a common belief that the cayman is
tongueless).
Thus the world became what it is.
duce men and women, who repeopled the earth." After many
deeds, in which Amalivaca regulated the world in true heroic
fashion, he departed to the shores beyond the seas, whence he
came and where he is supposed still to dwell.
Another myth, of the Cariban stock,^^ tells how Makonaima,
having created heaven and earth, sat on a silk-cotton-tree by a
river, and cutting off pieces of its bark, cast them about, those
which touched the water becoming fish, and others flying In the
air as birds, while from those that fell on land arose animals
and men. Boddam-Whetham gives a later addition, account-
ing for the races of men: "The Great Spirit Makanaima made
a large mould, and out of this fresh, clean clay the white man
stepped. After It got a little dirty the Indian was formed, and
the Spirit being called away on business for a long period the
mould became black and unclean, and out of it walked the
negro." As In case of other demiurges, there are many stories
of the transformations wrought by Makonaima.
It from the Warau that Brett obtains a story of a descent
Is
and when he grew up, she wished to marry him; but he cleverly
trapped her by luring her into a hollow tree filled with honey, of
which she was desperately fond, and there wedging her fast.
He then made a canoe and paddled to sea to appear no more,
though the Warau believe that he reached the land of the
white men and taught them the arts of life; Wowta escaped
from the tree only by taking the form of a frog, and her dismal
croaking is still heard in the woods.
From the tribes of this region come various other myths, be-
longing, apparently, to the cosmogonic and demiurgic cycles.
The Arawak tell of two destructions of the earth, once by
flame and once by fire, each because men disobeyed the will
of the Dweller-on-High, Aiomun Kondi; and they also have
a Noachlan hero, Marerewana, who saved himself and his
family during the deluge by tying his canoe with a rope of
great length to a large tree. Another Arawak tale begins with
the incident which opens the story of Maconaura. The Sun
built a dam to retain the fish in a certain place; but since,
There in the open, away from the dark, shadowy forest, he feels
of these Indians, who are bred and born in the forest and hills,
should be chiefly based on natural forms and sounds. Certain
rocks they will never point at with a finger, although your at-
tention be drawn to them by an inclination of the head.
may
Some rocks they will not even look at, and others again they
beat with green boughs. Common bird-cries become spirit-
voices. place of difficult access, or
Any known, is in- little
identify it. The Carib, he says, call the Milky Way by two
names, one of which signifies "the path of the tapir," while
the other means "the path of the bearers of white clay" a —
clay from which they make vessels: "The nebulous spots are
south, from the east, from the west, were all on the lookout for
the kingdom of women and all hearing and repeating tales
about them with such conviction that, as the Padre de Acuria
remarks,^ "it is could have been spread
not credible that a lie
fair, with long hair twisted over their heads, skins round their
loins, and bows and arrowsin their hands, with which they
killedseven or eight Spaniards." The description, in the cir-
cumstances described, does not inspire unlimited confidence
in the friar's certainty of vision, but there nothing incredi-
is
she says she is married, and they live together like spouses.
Parallels for this custom, (and for the reverse, in which men
assume the costume, labours, and way of life of women) are to
be found far and wide in America, —
indeed, to the Arctic
Zone. Magelhaes de Gandavo is authority, too, for the state-
ment that the coastal tribes of Brazil, like the Carib of the
north, have a dual speech, differing for the two sexes, at least
in some words but this is no extremely rare phenomenon.
;
More
truly in the mythical vein is the account given in the
tale of the adventures of Ulrich Schmidel. Journeying north-
ward from the city of Asuncion, in a company under the com-
mand of Hernando de Ribera, Schmidel and his companions
heard tales of the Amazons —
whose land of gold and silver,
the Indians astutely placed at a two months' journey from their
own land. "The Amazons have only one breast," says Schmidel,
"and they receive visits from men only twice or thrice a year.
If a boy is born to them, they send him to the father; if a girl,
THE AMAZON AND BRAZIL 283
they raise her, burning the right breast that it may not grow,
to the end that they may the more readily draw the bow, for
they are very vaHant and make war against their enemies'.
These women dwell in an isle, which can only be reached by
canoes." In the same credulous vein, but with quaintly
learned embellishments, is Sir Walter Raleigh's account: "I
had knowledge of all the rivers between Orenoque and Ama-
zones, and was very desirous to understand the truth of those
warlike women, because of some it is believed, of others not.
And though I digress from my purpose, yet I will set down
that which hath been delivered me for truth of those women,
and spake with a cacique or lord of people, that told me he
I
had been in the river, and beyond it also. The nations of these
women on the south side of the river in the provinces of
are
they are verified to have been, and In divers ages and provinces :
but they which are not far from Guiana do accompany with
men but once In a year, and for the time of one month, which
I gather by their relation, to be in
April: and that time all
kings of the border assemble, and queens of the Amazons; and
after the queens have chosen, the rest cast lots for their Valen-
tines. This one month they feast, dance, and drink of their
wines in abundance; and the moon being done, they all depart
to their own provinces. If they conceive, and be delivered of a
son, they return him to the father; If of a daughter, they nourish
it, and retain It: and as many as have daughters send unto the
heirlooms, they said, from their fathers who had received them
from the husbandless women. That the Indians themselves have
names for the Amazons is not strange — names with such mean-
ings as the Women-Living-Alone, the Husbandless-Women,
the Masterful- Women, —
for the Europeans have been in-
quiring about such women ever since their coming; it is, how-
ever, worthy of note that Orellana, to whom is credited the
first "Amazon" as a name for the great river, also heard
use of
a native name for the fabulous women; for Aparia, a native
vague tales of the Vestals of the Sun; and still another is the
occurrence of anomalous social and sexual relationships of
women, easily exaggerated in passing from tribe to tribe.
A special group of myths of the latter type is of pertinent
interest. Ramon Pane and
Peter Martyr give an example in
the tale of Guagugiana enticing the women away to Matenino.
A somewhat similar story is reported by Barboza Rodriguez
from the Rio Jamunda: the women, led away by an elder or
were accustomed to destroy their male children; but one
chief,
mother spared her boy, casting him into the water where he
286 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
lived as a fishby day, returning to visit her at night In human
form; and the other women, discovering this, seduced the youth,
who was finally disposed of by the jealous old man, whereupon
the angry women fled, leaving the chief womanless. A like
and where the fish and the tortoise are recurring symbols of
fertility. It is natural to find the fabled women In this associa-
lar fables the turtle appears as the Trickster. So, also, the frog,
which appears in magical and cosmogonical roles, —
as in the
the river, where the leg became the fish suruhim {Pimelodes
tigrinus), while the body rose to heaven to appear in the con-
stellation. The like tale is told by other tribes with respect to
others for their craft, as the monkeys and the fox; others for
fidelity, as the dog; for quickness, as the lynx; eagles and . . .
hawks for their power to fly and supply themselves with game;
the owl for power to see in the dark.
Its They adored. . .
the earth, as giving them its fruits; the air, for the breath of
life; the fire which warmed them and enabled them to eat
the maize which gave them bread, and the other fruits of their
country. Those dwelling on the coast had many divinities, but
regarded the sea as the most potent of all, calling It their
mother, because of the fish which it furnished with which they
nourished their lives. All these, in general, venerated the whale
because of hugeness; but beside this, commonly in each
Its
allof its species, and taking care, each season, to send them a
sufficiency of its kind for their good." Pere Tastevin bears wit-
ness to the same belief today: "To be successful in fishing, It Is
290 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
not to the fish that the Indian addresses himself, but to the
mother of the animal he would take. If he goes to fish the turtle,
he must first strike the prow of his canoe with the leaf of a small
caladium which is called yurard taya, caladium of the turtle; he
will strike in the same fashion the end of his turtle harpoon and
the point of his arrow, and often he will carry the plant in his
canoe. But let him beware lest he take the first turtle! She is
In many of the tribes the dances are mask dances, the masks
called upon, and authorities agree that the Indian can and
does imitate every kind of bird, beast, and fish with a bodily
and vocal verisimilitude that gives to these dances, where
many participate, the proper quality of a pandemonium.
Authorities disagree as to the intent of the dancing; It is obvious
to all that they are occasions of hilarity and fun; it Is evident
fact,
— the less intellectual tribes following blindly that in-
stinct for rhythm and imitation which, says Aristotle, Is native
to men, while with the others the dance has become con-
all
all the savages went outside the great hut, where they cleared
bread-yielding root.
It is probable that some form of the Mani myth first sug-
THE AMAZON AND BRAZIL 293
val,
—a mask dance {yurupari means ]ust mask" according
to Pere Tastevin, although some have given it the signifi-
cance of "demon") celebrated in conjunction with the ripening
of fruits of certain palms. Women and small boys are excluded
from the fete; Indeed, It is death for women even to see the
flutes and
pipes,
—as Humboldt said was true of the sacred
day the men blow upon them whenever the fruits are ripe. But
women and little boys must not look upon the flutes, lest
they die. This Milomaki, say the Yahuna, Is the Tupana of
the Indians, the Spirit Above, whose mask Is the sky.
The region about the headwaters of the Rio Negro and the
Yapura
— the scene of Koch-Griinberg's travels — Is the
centre of the highest development of the mask dances, which
seem to be recent enough with some of the tribes. In the
legends of the Kabeua It Is Kual, the mythic hero and fertility
spirit of the Arawak tribes, who Is regarded as the introducer
of the maskdances,
—Kual, who came with his brethren from
their stone-houses In the hills to teach the dances to his chil-
dren, and who now lives and dances In the sky-world. This Is
a myth which Immediately suggests the similar tales of Zufil
and the other Pueblos, and the analogy suggested is more than
borne out by what Koch-Griinberg ^^ tells of the Katcina-like
character of the masks. They all represent spirits or daemones.
PLATE XLI
Dance or ceremonial masks of Brazilian
Indians,
now in the
Peabody Museum.
,|»' I" f
m,',uAM
';|»,i'J /K'JK
THE AMAZON AND BRAZIL 295
the art of the magician may summon him. "All masks are
Daemones," said Koch-Griinberg's informant, "and all Dae-
mones are lords of the mask,"
—
good powers, they are good, and do not need attention. The
evil powers are numerous and busy; the wise man must be ever
"They have no proper name to express God, but they say the
Tupan is the thunder and lightning, and that this is he that
gave them the mattocks and the food, and because they have
no other name more natural and proper, they call God Tupan."
296 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
Thevet says that "Toupan" is a name for the thunder or for
the Great Spirit. Keane says of the Botocudo, perhaps the low-
"The terms Yanchang, Tapan, etc.,
est of the Brazilian tribes:
said to mean God, stand merely for spirit, demon, thunder, or
at the most the thunder-god." Of these same people Ehren-
reich reports: "The conception of God is wanting; they have no
word for It. The word Tupan, appearing in some vocabularies.
Is the well-known Tupi-Guaranian word, spread by missionaries
far over South America. The Botocudo understand by It, not
God, but the Christian priest himself!" Neither have they a
word for an evil principle; but they have a term for those souls
of the departed which, wandering among men at night, can do
them every imaginable ill, and "this raw animism is the only
trace of religion — if one can so call It — as
yet observed
among them." Hans Staden's account of the religion of the
maraka, with which they danced; each man had his own, but
once a year the paygis, or "prophets," pretended that a spirit
come from a far country had endowed them with the power of
conversing with all Tammarakas, and they would interpret
what these said. Women as well as men could become paygis,
out of wax. After they have been made they are beaten and
destroyed."
Of the Camacan, a people of the southern part of Bahia, the
Abbe Ignace says that while they recognize a supreme being,
Guegglahora, who dwells, Invisible, above the stars which he
governs, yet they give him no veneration, reserving their
prayers for the crowd of spirits and bogeys ghosts of the
—
dead, thunderers and storm-makers, were-beasts, and the
like,
— that inhabit their Immediate environment, forming,
as it were, earth's atmosphere. The Chorotes, too, believe in
good and in bad spirits, paying their respects to the latter;
while their neighbours, the Chlrlguano, hold that the soul,
after death, goes to the kingdom of the Great Spirit, Tumpa,
where for a time he enjoys the pleasures of earth In a magnified
sounding reeds, for the reason that Tamoi ascended toward the
298 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
east from the top of a bamboo, while spirits struck the earth
with its reeds. Moreover, the bamboo being one of the chief
benefactions of Tamoi, they consider it as the intermediary
between them and the divinity." Tamoi is besoughrt in times of
seeding, that he may send rain to revive the thirsting earth; his
gination than does Father Sky. On the whole for the South
American tribes, the judgement of Couto de Magalhaes seems
sane; that the aboriginals of Brazil possessed no idea of a single
and powerful God, at the time of the discovery, and Indeed
that their languages were incapable of expressing the Idea; but
that they did recognize a being superior to the others, whose
name was Tupan. Observers from Acuiia to Whiffen have
noted individual sceptics among the Indians; certain tribes
even (though the information is most likely from individuals)
are said to believe In no gods and no spirits; and In some
tribes the beliefs are obviously more Inchoate than In others.
But In the large, the South Americans are at one with all man-
kind in their belief In a Spirit of Good, whose abode is the
300 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
Above, and in their further belief in multitudes of dangerous
spirit neighbours sharing with them the Here.
the Korupira helps; but the hunter must not tell his wife, and
when she, suspecting a secret, follows her husband, the Koru-
pira kills her. In another story the hunter, using the familiar
ruse of pretended self-Injury by means of which Jack Induces
the Giant to stab himself (an Incident In which Coyote often
angry flocks, but the Korupira replaces the lost flesh with wax
and brings the hunter to life. Again, he warns the hunter not
to eat hot things; the latter disobeys, and forthwith melts
away.
Another "devil" mentioned by Cardim is the Anhanga.
The Anhanga is formless, and lives indeed only in thought,
especially Indreams; in reality, he is the Incubus, the Night-
mare. The Anhanga steals a child from its mother's hammock,
and puts it on the ground beneath. The child cries, "Mother!
Mother! Beware the Anhanga which lies beneath us!" The
mother strikes, hitting the child; while the laughing Anhanga
departs, calling back, "I have fooled you! I have fooled you!"
In another tale, which recalls to us the tragedy of Pentheus and
Agave, a hunter meets a doe and a fawn in the forest. He wounds
the fawn, which calls to its mother; the mother returns, and
the hunter slays her, only to discover that it is his own mother,
whom the wicked sprite (here the Yurupari) had transformed
into a doe.
But even more to be feared than the daemones are the ghosts
and beast-embodied souls. ^^ Like most other peoples in a
parallel stage of mental life, the South American Indians very
generally believe in metempsychosis, souls of men returning to
earth in animal and even vegetal forms, and quite consistently
with the malevolent purpose of wreaking vengeance upon
olden foes. The belief has many characteristic modifications:
in some cases the soul does not leave the body until the flesh
Is decayed; in many Instances It passes for a time to a life of
hardly a wild animal that will eat Its kind; how then shall I
eat human flesh?' Then he, resuming his meal: 'I am a tiger,
and I find itgood.'" Cardlm's description of cannibal rites
is in many ways reminiscent of the Aztec sacrifice of the de-
voted youth to Tezcatlipoca the victim Is painted and adorned,
:
Is
given a wife, and indeed so honoured that he does not even
seek to escape, — "for they say that
a wretched thing to
It Is
die, and lie stinking, and eaten with worms"; throughout, the
ritual element is obvious. On the other hand, the conception of
from Hans Staden on, writers tell us that while the captive
takes his lot fatalistically his last words are a reminder to his
slayers that his kindred are preparing
a like end for them.
"I wander, always wander; and when I get where I want to be,
I shall not stop, but still go on. ..."
Sun, moon, and stars, darkness and day, all find mythic ex-
pression; but there is little trace among the wild tribes of any-
thing approaching ritual devoted to these, or of aught save
mythopoesy In the thought of them.
The most rudimentary level is doubtless represented by the
Botocudo, with whom, says Ehrenreich,^ taru signifies either sun
or moon, but principally the shining vault of heaven, whether
illuminated by either of these bodies or by lightning; further,
the same word, in suitable phrase, comes to mean both wind
and weather, and even night. In contrast with this we have
the extraordinary assurance that the highly intelligent Passe
tribe believes (presumably by their own induction) that the
earth moves and the sun Is stationary. The intermediate, and
3o6 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
perhaps most truly mythic stage of speculation is represented
in the Bakairi tales told by von den Steinen, in which the sun
the wife of the bat who is the lord of darkness, claps to the lid,
concealing the sun while the heaven returns to its former posi-
tion. Night and sleep are often personified in South American
stories,
— as in the tale of the stork who tried to kill sleep, —
and here Evaki, the mistress of night, is represented as stealing
sleep from the eyes of lizards, and dividing it among all living
beings.
A charming allegory of the Amazon and Its seasons Is re-
corded by Barboza Rodriguez. Many years ago the Moon
would become the bride of the Sun; but when they thought to
wed, they found that this would destroy the earth: the burning
love of the Sun would consume It, the tears of the Moon would
flood it; and fire and water would mutually destroy each other,
the one extinguished, the other evaporated. Hence, they sep-
arated, going on either side. The Moon wept a day and a night,
so that her tears fell to earth and flowed down to the But
sea.
month shine
I again to the measure of my appointed time. All
that beholds me is renewed." Teschauer credits many Brazil-
ian Indians with an extensive knowledge of the stars
— their
course, ascension, the time of their appearance and disappear-
THE AMAZON AND BRAZIL 307
ance, and the changes of the year that correspond, but this
seems somewhat exaggerated in view of the limited amount
of the lore cited in its support,
— legends of the Pleiades
and Canopus already mentioned, and in addition only Orion,
Venus, and Sirius. Of course the Milky Way is observed, and
as in North America it Is regarded as the pathway of souls.
people who
die, that the soul shall not remain in darkness!"
On an analogous theme but in a vein that Is Indeed grim Is
the Cherentes star legend reported by de Ollveira.^^ The sun
is the supreme object of worship in this tribe, while the moon
and the stars, especially the Pleiades, are his cult companions.
In the festival of the dead there a high pole up which the
Is
way he met the star who blamed him for his disobedience and
made him take a bath to cleanse him of the pollution. But he
could no longer endure the sky-world, but ran to the spot where
the leaves were tied to the sky and jumped on to the palm-tree,
which immediately began to shrink back toward the earth:
"You run away In vain, you shall soon return," the star called
after him; and so indeed It was, for he had barely time to tell
his kindred of his adventure before he died. And "thus it was
known among the Indians that no heaven of delight awaits
them above, even though the stars shine and charm us."
The uniting of heaven and earth by a tree or rock which
grows from the lower to the upper world Is found in many forms,
and is usually associated with cosmogonic myths (true crea-
tion stories are not common Such a story is the
In Brazil).
Mundurucu tale, reported by Teschauer,^^ which begins with
a chaotic darkness from which came two men, Karusakahiby,
THE AMAZON AND BRAZIL 309
"In the beginning there was no night; the day was unbroken.
Night slept at the bottom of the waters. There were no animals,
but all things could speak." It is said, proceeds the tale, that
time."
THE AMAZON AND BRAZIL 311
form. Now begins the cycle of their labours. They stole the sun
and the moon from the red and the white vultures, and gave
order to their way keeping them in pots, cover-
in the heavens,
departure of Keri and Kami, who at the last ascend a hill, and
go thence on their separate ways. "Whither are they gone.^
Who knows ? Our ancestors knew not whither they went. To-
day no one knows where they are."
The Bakairi dwell in the central regions of Brazil; the Yura-
care are across the continent, near the base of the Andes. From
them d'Orbigny obtained a version of the same cosmogony,
but fuller and with more Incidents. The world began with
sombre forests, inhabited by the Yuracare. Then came Sara-
ruma and burned the whole country. One man only escaped,
he having constructed an underground refuge. After the con-
flagration he was wandering sadly through the ruined world
when he met Sararuma. "Although I am the cause of this ill,
yet I have pity on you," said the latter, and he gave him a
handful of seeds from whose planting sprang, as by magic, a
magnificent forest. A wife appeared, as it were ex nihilo, and
bore sons and a daughter to this man. One day the maiden
encountered a beautiful tree with purple flowers, called Ule.
Were it but a man, how she would love it! And she painted
314 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
and adorned the and hopes,
tree In her devotion, with sighs —
hopes that were not in vain, for the tree became a beautiful
youth. Though at first she had to bind him to keep him from
wandering away, the two became happy spouses. But one
day Ule, hunting with his brothers, was slain by a jaguar. His
bride, in her grief like Isis, gathered together the morsels of his
torn body. Again, her love was rewarded and Ule was restored
to life, but as they journeyed he glanced In a pool, saw a dis-
figured face, where a bit of flesh had not been recovered, and
despite the bride's tears took his departure, telling her not to
look behind, no matter what noise she heard. But she was
startled into doing this, became lost, and wandered Into a
jaguar's lair. The mother of the jaguars took pity upon her,
but her four sons were for killing her. To test her obedience
eyes In the back of his head, detected the ruse and killed her.
From her body was torn the child which she was carrying, Tiri,
who was raised In secret by the jaguar mother.
When Tiri was grown he one day wounded a paca, which
said:"You live In peace with the murderers of your mother,
but me, who have done you no harm, you wish to kill." Tiri
demanded the meaning of this, and the paca told him the tale.
Tiri then lay In wait for the jaguar brothers, slaying the first
three with arrows, but the jaguar with eyes In the back of his
head, climbed Into a tree, calling upon the trees, the sun, stars,
and moon to save him. The moon snatched him up, and since
that time he can be seen upon her bosom, while all jaguars love
the night. Tiri, who was the master of all nature, taught culti-
vation to his foster-mother, who now had no sons to hunt
for her. He longed for a companion, and created Caru, to be his
brother, from his own finger-nail; and the two lived in great
amity, performing many deeds. Once, Invited to a feast, they
spilled a vase of liquor which flooded the whole earth and
THE AMAZON AND BRAZIL 315
drowned Caru; but when the waters were subsided, TIrl found
his brother's bones and revived him. The brothers then married
birds, by whom they had children. The son of Caru died and
was burled. Tirl then told Caru at the end of a certain time
to go seek his son, who would be revived, but to be careful not
to eat him. Caru, finding a manioc plant on the grave, ate of it.
Immediately a great noise was heard, and Tiri said: "Caru has
disobeyed and eaten his son; in punishment he and all men shall
be mortal, and subject to all toils and all sufferings."
In following adventures the usual transformations take place,
and mankind, in their tribes, are led forth from a great rock,
TIrl saying tothem: "Ye must divide and people all the earth,
and that ye shall do so I create discord and make you enemies
of one another." Thus arose the hostility of tribes. Tiri now
decided to depart, and he sent birds In the several directions to
discover in which the earth extends farthest. Those sent to the
east and the north speedily returned, but the bird sent toward
the setting sun was gone a long time, and when at last It re-
turned it brought with It beautiful feathers. So Tiri departed
into the West, and disappeared.
CHAPTER X
THE PAMPAS TO THE LAND OF FIRE
I. THE FAR SOUTH 1
flowing almost due south from the centre of the continent, form
a kind of axis, dividing the hilly lands on the east from the
youngest regions,
— of which the terminus Is the mountain
long ago, the Sun fellfrom the sky. The Mocobi raised it and
placed it again In the sky, but It fell a second time and burned
all the forests. The Mocobi saved themselves by changing
themselves Into caymans and other amphibians. A man and a
woman climbed a tree to save themselves, a flame singed their
faces, and they were changed into apes. This tale Is . . .
possit, are the words of Tertulllan, In his Apology for the Chris-
tians. Theologians agree in denying that any man in possession
of his reason can, without a crime, remain Ignorant of God for
Spanish word for God, and insert Into the catechism Dios ecnam
coagarik, God He goes on to tell how,
the creator of things."
camped in the
open with a party of Indians, the serene sky
delighting the eyes with Its twinkling stars, he began a conver-
sation with the Cacique Ychoalay: "Do you behold the splen-
dour of the Heaven, with Its magnificent arrangement of stars?
Who can suppose that all this is produced by chance? .Who . .
They are unacquainted with God, and with the very name of
God, yet they affectionately salute the evil spirit, whom they
call Aharaigichi, or Queevet, with the title of grandfather,
ants, or, it may be, the creation of their 'grandfather the devil,'
is nothing more nor less than the widespread tradition that
things they either possess or desire to the sun, and to the sun
they pray for them"; and one of their priests, he says, when told
of God, hour we never knew nor acknowledged
said: "Till this
malignant hag who exacts an eye from any poor wretch who
has nothing better to pay.
there they sleep; they carry their wives along with them with
all the chattels they possess."
''They are all acquainted with the devil, whom they call
Balichii [Falichu, Gualichu, are variants found in other
dwell with God beyond the world. They seem to hold two
piercing shrieks. But strange as was this wild figure, his com-
panion, victim or quarry, was stranger and more striking still.
For on an ancient zaino sat perched a little brown maiden,
whose aspect was forelorn and pathetic to the last degree. She
rode absolutely naked in the teeth of the bitter cold, her breast,
face and limbs blotched and smeared with the rash of some
say that when the beasts, birds, and lesser animals were created,
those of the more nimble kind came immediately out of the
caverns; but that the bulls and cows being the last, the Indians
were so frightened at the sight of their horns, that they stopped
the entrances of their caves with great stones. This is the grave
reason why they had no black cattle in their country, till the
Spaniards brought them over; who, more wisely, had let them
out of their caves."
A more recent account of what is a kindred, if not the same
myth is given by Ramon Lista.^^ The creator-hero, in this ver-
sion, is named El-lal. "El-lal came into the world in a strange
way. His father Nosjthej (a kind of Saturn), wishing to devour
him, had snatched him from his mother's womb. He owed his
rescue to the intervention of the terguerr (a rodent) which
carried him away to its cave; this his father tried in vain to
enter. After having learned from the famous rodent the proper-
and the directions of the mountain-paths,
ties of different plants
El-lal himself invented the bow and arrow, and with these
stars are old Indians; that the Milky Way is the field where the
old Indians hunt ostriches [more likely, this myth attaches to
the Southern Cross, as Guevara says It does with the Indians
of Paraguay; and as. In North America, It attaches to the Ursa
Major], and that the Magellan clouds are the feathers of the
ostriches which they kill. They have an opinion that the crea-
tion is not yet exhausted; nor is all of it yet come out to the
THE PAMPAS TO THE LAND OF FIRE 337
see into other regions under the earth. Each wizard is supposed
to have familiar spirits in attendance, who give supernatural
Information, and execute the conjurer's will. They believe
that the souls of their wizards, after death, are of the number
of these demons, called Valichu, to whom every evil, or un-
continents.
Havethe conceptions travelled, from pole almost to pole.^
or are they separate inspirations to a universal human nature
from a never vastly varying environmental nature? This is a
riddle not easy to solve; for while it is not difficult to imagine
unrelated peoples severally framing the notion that men and
animals are born out of the womb of Earth or that the image
of their own hunting parties is written in the constellations —
for, asMolina remarks, more than one people have "regulated
the things of heaven by those of the earth," —
still it is odd to
338 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
find such
particular agreements constant from latitude to
latitude throughout a hemisphere.
V. THE FUEGIANS
The Yahgan and Alakaluf tribes of TIerra del Fuego and the
adjacent archipelago enjoy the unenviable distinction of being
rated as among the lowest of human beings both as to actual
culture and possible development. The earlier navigators re-
garded them as little more than animals —
and often, unfor-
tunately, treated them no better. Even Darwin, viewing them
with the naturalist's eye, saw little but annoyance In their
presence and formed a dismal estimate of their powers. "We
were always much surprised at the little notice, or rather none
whatever, which was evinced respecting many things, even such
as boats, the use of which must have been evident.
Simple
circumstances,
— such as the whiteness of our the beauty
skins,
of cloth or blue beads, the absence of women, our care
scarlet
in washing ourselves,
— excited admiration
their more than far
a grand or complicated object, such as the ship." *^ Darwin,
say, he found that his father had died some months previously.
He did not forget to remind Mr. Bynoe (his most confidential
friend) of their former conversation, and, with a significant
shake of the head said, it was 'bad — very bad.'
Yet these
simple words seemed to express the extent of his sorrow." . . .
too, are Invisible,but they hate man and cause disease and
death. Still another class (reported by the Missionary Bridges)
are called Hannouch. Some of these are supposed to have an
eye In the back of their heads; others are hairless and sleep
standing up supported by a tree; they hold In hand a white
stone which they hurl with Inevitable aim at any object soever,
and they sometimes attack and wound men. One man, said to
have been stolen away as a child by the Hannouch, was named
Hannouchmachaa'inan, "stolen-by-the-Hannouch." Any man
who goes off to live by himself Is called aHannouch, while a
demented person is regarded as tormented by one of these
beings.
The Fuegian's equivalent for the Eskimo's Angakok Is the
Yakamouch. Bridges' account Is quoted by Hyades: "Nearly
THE PAMPAS TO THE LAND OF FIRE 341
his great boat and carries them far away from home." Captain
Low, of the Fitzroy expedition, asserted that there was not
dimly haunted soul of the Fuegian who "supposes the sun and
moon, male and female, to be very old indeed, and that some
old man, who knew their maker, had died without leaving in-
formation on this subject";^" but that no matter what the
failure to build or the erosion of superstructure, or Indeed no
matter what the variety of superstructures as, for example,
made apparent In the characteristic colours of North American
and South American mythologies, there is still au fond a single
racial complexion of mind, with a recognizable kinship of the
spiritual life. Through vast geographical distances, among
peoples long mutually forgotten if ever mutually known. In
every variety of natural garb, polar and tropical, forest and sea,
this kinship persists, not favoured by, but In spite of, environ-
344 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
ments the most changing. It Is not necessary here invariably
to assume migrations of ideas, passed externally from tribe to
Chapter I
I.
Among early writers on Antillean religion the most important
are Christopher Columbus, Ramon Pane, and Peter Martyr d'Anghi-
era. Columbus left Fray Ramon Pane in Haiti with instructions to
13. Gomara [a], 173, ed. Vedia (tr. Fewkes [b], pp.
ch. xxvii, p.
66-67); cf. Benzoni, pp. 79-82; Las Casas [b], ch. clxvii. The plate
representing the Earth Spirit ceremony is taken from (cf. Fewkes
[b], Plate IX) PIcart,
The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the
Several Nations oj the known World, London, I73I-37) Plate No. 7S,
14. pp. 335-38; cf. Fewkes [e], p. 355.
Im Thurn,
15. Pane, chh. xiv, xxv; Gomara [a], ch. xxxiii, pp. 175-
Ramon
76, ed. Vedia, gives supplementary information.
352 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
1 6.Authorities cited for Carib lore are Columbus, Select Letters y
pp. 29-37; im Thurn, pp. 192, 217, 222; Fewkes [b], pp. 27, 217-20,
68; Ballet, citing du Tertre and others, pp. 421-22, 433-38, 400-01;
Davies, cited by Fewkes [b], pp. 60, 65; Currier, citing la Borde,
pp. 508-09.
Chapter II
pendix i; X. xxi.
20. Seler [d], p. 133; and for discussion of Xochiquetzal, Seler [b],
pp. 118-24.
21.Sahagun, I. vi, xli. Seler [b], pp. 92-100, discusses Tlazolteotl,
on p. 93 giving the story of the sacrifice of the Huastec, taken from
Ramirez, Anales, pp. 25-26.
22. The conception of sacrifice as instituted to keep the world
vivified, and especially to preserve the life of the Sun, appears in a
number of documents, particularly in connexion with cosmogony
(see Ch. Ill, i, ii), as Appendix, iv; VI. iii; VII. ii;
Sahagun, III,
Explicacion del Codex Telleriano-Remensis (Kingsborough, v. 135);
and especially in the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas; see
also Payne, i.
577-82; Seler [a], iii. 285; [b], pp. 37-41; "Die Sage von
Quetzalcouatl," in CA xvi (Vienna, 1910).
23. Sahagun, III, Appendix, i (quoted); cf. Seler [b], pp. 82-86.
See also Sahagun, loc. cit., ch. ii, for a description of Tlalocan, and
ch. iii. for a description of the celestial paradise (cf. I. x and VI. xxix).
Chapter III
395)-
3.Mixtec and Zapotec myth are studied by Seler, 28 BBE, pp.
285-305 (pp. 289, 286 are here quoted) the source cited for the Mixtec
;
codices, see Sahagun, bk. vii; Tezozomoc, Ixxxii; Seler, 28 BBE, "The
Venus Period in the Picture Writings of the Borgian Codex Group"
(tr. from art. in Berliner Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologie, Ethnologie und
Urgeschichte, 1898); Hagar [a], [b]; Chavero [b]; and Nuttall [a],
especially pp. 245-59. On the question of the zodiac, advocated by
Hagar, see H. J. Spinden, "The Question of the Zodiac in America,"
in AA, new series, xviii (1916), and the bibliography there given.
11. Accounts of the archaeology of Tollan, or Tula, are to be found
in Charnay [a], iv-vi, and in Joyce [b], especially in the Appendix.
Sahagun's description of the Toltec is in X. xxix. i. The Spiegazione
of Codex Vaticanus A, Plate X, gives interesting additions (here
quoted from Kingsborough, vi. 178). The chief authority, however,
is Ixtlilxochitl, whose accounts of the Toltec, Chichimec, and espe-
borough, i; see also Garcia Cubas [b], where Codex Boturini is com-
pared with a supplementary historical painting; interesting repro-
ductions of related Acolhua paintings, the "Mappe Tlotzin" and the
"Mappe Quinatzin," are in Aubin [a]).
Chapter IV
1. The physiography and ethnography of the Maya region are
summarized in Spinden [a]; Beuchat, II, ii; and in Joyce [b], ch. viii.
Wissler, The American Indian in this, as in other fields, most efi"ec-
tively presents the relations
— ethnical, cultural, historical
— to the
other American groups. Recent special studies of importance are
Tozzer [a]; Starr, In Indian Mexico, etc.; Sapper [b]; and the more
distinctively archaeological studies of Holmes, Morley, Spinden, and
others.
2. It is unfortunate that the region of Maya culture was the sub-
ject of no such full reports, dating from the immediate post-Conquest
period, as we possess from Mexico. The more important of the
Spanish writers who deal with the Yucatec centres are Aguilar,
CogoUudo, Las Casas, Landa, Lizana, Nunez de la Vega, Ordonez y
Aguiar, Pio Perez, Pedro Ponce, and Villagutierre, with Landa easily
first in significance. The histories of Eligio Ancona and of Carrillo y
Ancona are the leading Spanish works of later date. Native writings
are represented by three hieroglyphic pre-Cortezian codices, namely,
Codex Dresdensis, Codex Tro-Cortesianus, and Codex Peresianus,
as well as by the important Books of Chilam Balam and the Chronicle
of Nakuk Pech from the early Spanish period (for description of
thirteen manuscripts and bibliography of published works relating
to their Interpretation, see Tozzer, "The Chilam Balam Books," in
CA xlx [Washington, 1917]). Yet what Mayan civilization lacks In
the way of literary monuments is more than compensated by the
remains of Its art and architecture, to which an Immense amount of
shrewd study has been devoted. The more conspicuous names of
those who have advanced this study are mentioned In connexion with
the literature of the Maya calendar, Note 22, infra. The region has
NOTES 361
been explored archaeologically with great care, the magnificent re-
ports of Maudsley Centrali-Americana) and of the Pea-
(in Biologia
body Museum expeditions {Memoirs), prepared by Gordon, Maler,
Thompson, and others, being the collections of eminence. Brasseur
de Bourbourg can scarcely be mentioned too often in connexion with
this field. His fault is that of Euhemerus, but he is neither the first nor
the last of the tribe of this sage; while for his virtues, he shows more
constructive imagination than any other Americanist: probably the
picture which he presents would be less criticized were it less vivid.
3. Landa, chh. v-xi (vl, ix, being here quoted).
4. The sources for the history of the Maya are primarily the native
chronicles (the Books of Chilam Balam), the Relaciones de Yucatan,
and the histories of CogoUudo, Landa, LIzana, and Villagutierre.
The deciphering of the monumental dates of the southern centres
has furnished an additional group of facts, the correlation of which
to the history of the north has become a special problem, with its own
literature. The most important attempts to synchronize Maya dates
with the years of our era are by Pio Perez (reproduced both by
Stephens [b] and by Brasseur de Bourbourg [b]); Seler [a], i, "Bedeu-
tung des Maya-Kalenders fiir die historische Chronologie"; Good-
man [a], [b]; Bowditch [a]; Spinden [a], pp. 130-35; [b] (with chart);
Joyce [b], Appendix iii (with chart); and Morley [a], [b], [c] and [d].
Bowditch, Spinden, Joyce, and Morley are not radically divergent
and may be regarded as representing the conservative view —
here
accepted as obviously the plausible one. Carrillo y Ancona, ch. ii,
analyzes some of the earlier opinions; while the first part of Ancona's
Historia de Yucatan is devoted to ancient Yucatec history and is
doubtless the best general work on the subject.
5. Brinton [f], p. 100 ("Introduction" to the Book of Chilan Balam
of Mani).
6. Spinden [b]; Joyce [b], ch. viii. But cf. Morley's chronological
18. Tozzer[a], pp. 150 ff.; also, for the Lacandones, pp. 93-99.
The names of the deities, Maya and Lacandone, are here in several
cases altered slightly from the form in which Tozzer gives them, for
the sake of avoiding the use of unfamiliar phonetic symbols; the
result is, of course, phonetic approximation only.
19. Landa, chh. xxvi, xxvii.
20. Las Casas [b], ch. cxxiii.
21. Landa, ch. xxxiv. In chh. iii, xxxii, he gives information in
regard to the goddess Ixchel.
NOTES 363
22. The literature of the Maya calendar system is, of course, inti-
mately connected with that of the Mexican (see Note 9, Chapter III).
The native sources for its study are the Codices and the monumental
inscriptions, while of early Spanish expositions the most important
are those of Landa and Pio Perez. In recent times a considerable body
of scholars have devoted special attention to the Maya inscriptions
and to the elucidation of the calendar, foremost among them being,
in America, Ancona, Bowditch, Chavero, Goodman, Morley, Spinden,
Cyrus Thomas, and in Europe, Brasseur de Bourbourg, Forstemann,
Rosny, and Seler. The foundation of the elucidation of Maya as-
tronomical knowledge is Forstemann's studies of the Dresden Codex,
while the study of mythic elements associated with the calendar is
represented by Charency, especially "Des ages ou soleils d'apres la
mythologie des peuples de la Nouvelle Espagne," section ii, in CA
iv. 2; and by J. H. Martinez, "Los Grandes Ciclos de la historia
Mayas," in CJ
xviii (London, 1913), pp. 164-71. Senor Hernandez
notes that the tense of the verb in the first sentence of the myth is
for the sake of literal translation.
Chapter V
1. For ethnic analysis Thomas and Swanton is followed here and
throughout the chapter. Of the earlier Spanish authors Las Casas
(especially [b], chh. cxxii-cxxv, clxxx, ccxxxiv ff.) is the most
weighty. See also Morley [e], "The Rise and Fall of the Maya Civil-
izations," in CJ xix (Washington, 1917).
2. Brinton [h], p. 69.
3. ib. p. 149.
231 j6F., "The Bat God of the Maya Race"; also, Dieseldorff, ib., p.
665, "A Clay Vessel with a Picture of a Vampire-headed Deity";
of. Giglioli, CA xvi (Vienna and Leipzig, 1910).
7. The Manuscrit Cakchiquel, or Memorial de Tecpan-Atitlan, as
he calls It,was given to Brasseur de Bourbourg by Juan Gavarrete,
of the Convent of Franciscans of Guatemala. Its author, says the
Abbe ([a], i.
p. Ixxxiii) was Don Francisco Ernandez Arana Xahila, of
the Princes Ahpotzotziles of Guatemala, grandson of King Hunyg,
who died of the plague, five years before the Spaniards set foot in
this country, in 15 19. The manuscript was brought down to 1582 by
this author, and thence carried forward to 1597 by Don Francisco
Diaz Gebuta Queh, of the same family. Brinton published his trans-
lation under the title. The Annals of the Cakchiquels, in Philadelphia,
1885, and the work now commonly is referred to under this name.
It is Brinton's version which is here followed, with some inconse-
9. ib. p. 14.
Chapter VI
I. The ethnology of the Andean region is treated by Joyce [c],
Wissler, The American Indian, and Beuchat, II. iv. Bastian, Cultur-
lander, and Payne, History, give more extended views; while tribal
distribution in its cultural relations is probably best presented by
Schmidt, in ZE xlv. Spinden, "The Origin and Distribution of
Agriculture in America," and Means, "An Outline of the Culture-
Sequence in the Andean Area," both in CJ xix (Washington, 1917),
are significant contributions to the problem of origins and history;
with these should be placed, "Origenes Etnograficos de Colombia,"
by Carlos Cuervo Marquez, in the Proceedings of the Second Pan
American Scientific Congress, (Washington, 1917). Spinden con-
i
Chapter VII
The history and archaeology of aboriginal Peru is summarized
I.
by Markham, The Incas of Peru (1910), to which his notes and in-
troductions to his many translations of Spanish works, published by
the Hakluyt Society, form a varied supplementation. Among earlier
authorities E. G. Squier, Travel and Exploration in the Land of the In-
cas (1877), and Castelnau, Expedition (1850-52), are eminent; while
of later authorities the more conspicuous are: for Inca monuments,
Bingham, of the Yale Expedition, and Baessler; for Tiahuanaco,
Crequi-Montfort, of the Mission scientifique frangaise a Tiahuan-
aco, Bandelier, Gonzalez de la Rosa, Posnansky, Uhle and Stiibel;
for the coastal regions, Baessler, Reiss and Stiibel, Uhle, Tello;
and for the Calchaqui territories, Ambrosetti, Boman, and Lafone
Quevado. General and comparative studies are presented in Wissler,
NOTES Z^l
The American Indian; Beuchat, Manuel; Joyce, South American
Archeology; Spinden, Handbook; while a careful effort to restore the
sequences of cultures in Peru is Means, "Outline of the Culture-
Sequence in the Andean Area," in CA xix (Washington, 1917).
2. Cieza de Leon [a], ch. xxxvi.
o o
o ?
>^
iTiahu anaco
TRUJILLO Proto-Ch
proper
Decac ent forms of 1 rahuanaco Art Real Chimu Inca
TABLE DESIGNED TO SHOW THE SEQUENCE OF ABORIGINAL AMERICAN CULTURES AND THEIR
CHRONOLOGIC RELATIONS
368 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
7. For the myths and rehgion of the coastal peoples of Peru the
important early authorities are Arriaga, Avila, Balboa, Cieza de
Leon, and Garcilasso de la Vega. Markham [a], especially chh. xiv,
XV, is the primary authority here followed. For archaeological de-
tailsthe authorities are Baessler; Bastian; Joyce [c], ch. viii; Squier
[e];Tello; Putnam; and Uhle. It is from this coastal region that the
most striking Peruvian pottery comes, the Truxillo and Nasca styles
respectively typifying the Chimu and Chincha groups.
8. Tello, "Los antiguos cementerios del valle de Nasca," p. 287,
14. Avila's Narrative in Rites and Laws of the Yncas (HS), 1883,
pp. 121-47, is the authority for the myths given in the text; but
several of the stories appear also in Molina, Salcamayhua, and Sar-
miento, showing that the mythic cycle was widespread, extending
into the highlands as well as along the coast. The people from whom
Avila received his tales were of a tribe that had migrated from the
coast to higher valleys.
15. The Tiahuanaco monolith Is by Squier [e], ch. xv;
interpreted
Markham [a], ch. II; Rosa, "Les deux Tiahuanaco,"
Gonzalez de la
CJ xvi (1910); and by Posnansky, "El signo escalonado," CJ xviii
(1913). The latter regards the meander design, or its element, the
stair-design in its various forms, as a symbol of the earth; and he
believes Tiahuanaco to be the place of origin of this symbol, whence
it spread northward Into Mexico. It is, of course, among the Pueblo
ix, and by Joyce [c], ch. vii. The primary sources are Garcilasso de
NOTES 371
la Vega, Cieza de Leon, Molina, Salcamayhua, and Sarmlento, and
perhaps most important of all Bias Valera, the "Anonymous Jesuit"
whose writings were utilized by various early narrators. Salcamay-
hua's chart is published by Markham, in a corrected form, in Rites
and Laws of the Yncas, p. 84. The literal reproduction accompanies
Hagar's discussion of it, CJ
xii, and it has been several times repro-
duced. Its interpretation is discussed by Hagar, loc. cit.; Spinden,
AA^ new Lafone Quevado [b], and "Los Ojos de
series, xviii (1916);
Imaymana," with a reproduction of the chart which he characterizes
as "the key to Peruvian symbolism"; cf., also, Ambrosetti, CA xix
(Washington, 1913).
29. The myth of the Ayars is recorded by Sarmiento, x-xiii; it is
discussed by Markham [a], ch. iv, where are the interpretations of
the names adopted in this text.
30. Cieza de Leon [b], chh. vi-viii (pp. 13, 16, quoted).
31. Garcilasso de la Vega, bk. i, ch. xviii.
Chapter VIII
1. for the antiquity of man in South America rests
The argument
mainly upon the discoveries and theories of Ameghino, especially,
La Antigiiedad del hombre en la Plata (2 vols., Buenos Aires and
Paris, 1880) and artt. in AnMB, who is followed by other Argen-
tinian savants. Ales Hrdlicka, Early Man in South America (52
BBE, Washington, 191 2), examines the claims made for the sev-
eral discoveries and uniformly rejects the assumption of their great
though not preoccupied with the small details of earthly and human
affairs, such a conclusion is directly opposed to all evidence, early
and North American and South American, missionary and
late,
anthropological. Cf. Mythology of All Races, x. Note 6, and refer-
ences there given; and, in the present volume, not only Ch. I, iii
(Ramon Pane is surely among the earliest), but also passing over
—
the numerous allusions in descriptions of the pantheons of the more
advanced tribes (Chh. II-VII) —
Ch. IX, iii (early and late for the
low Brazilian tribes); Ch. X, ii, iii, iv.
8. Sir Richard Schomburgk, ii. 319-20; i. 170-72. Roth gives
legends from many sources touching these deities and others of a
similar character.
9. Humboldt (Ross), ii. 362.
[b]
10. This tale translated and abridged from van Coll, in An-
is
thropos, ii, 682-89; Roth, chh. vii, xviii, affords an excellent com-
mentary.
11. Brett [a], ch. x, pp. 377-78.
12. Humboldt
[b] (Ross), ii. 182-83, 473~75- Descriptions of the
Chapter IX
I. The myth of the Amazons is not only the earliest European
vii (1912), especially section vi; Teschauer [a], part i, texts (mainly
derived from Couto de Magalhaes); Tastevin, sections iii, vi; Gar-
cilasso de la Vega, bk. 1, chh. ix, x (quoted).
9. Cook, p. 385; cf. Whiffen, chh. xv, xvi, xviii; and von den
Steinen [b], pp. 239-41.
10. Whiffen, pp. 385-86. The myths of manioc and other vegeta-
tion are from Teschauer [a], p. 743; Couto de Magalhaes, ii. 134-35;
Whiffen, loc. cit.; and Koch-Griinberg [a], ii. 292-93.
11. The legends of St. Thomas are discussed by Granada, ch. xv,
especially pp. 210-15 (cf. also, ch. xx, "Origen mitico y excelencias
NOTES 375
del urutau," with accounts of the vegetation-spirit Neambiii), The
suggested relationship of Brazilian and Peruvian myth is considered
by Lafone Quevado in RevMP iii. 332-36; cf, also, Wissler, The
American Indian, pp. 198-99. It may be worth noting that there is a
group of South American names of mythic heroes or deities which
might, in one form or another, suggest or be confounded with Tomds,
among them the Guarani Tamoi (same as Tupan, and perhaps re-
lated to Tonapa), the Tupi Zume. The legend has been discussed in
the present work in Ch. VII, iv.
12. Koch-Griinberg [a], ii.
173-34; for details regarding the use of
masks and mask-dances, see also Whiffen; Tastevin; M. Schmidt,
ch. xiv; Cook, ch. xxiii; Spruce, ch. xxv; von den Steinen [b]; and
Stradelli.
13. Cardim (Purchas, xvi), pp. 419-20; Thevet [b], pp. 136-39;
Keane, p. 209; Ehrenreich [c], p. 34; Hans Staden [b], ch. xxii.
14. Fric and Radin, p. 391; Ignace, pp. 952-53; von Rosen, pp.
656-67; Pierini, pp. 703 ff.
15. D'Orbigny, vii, ch. xxxi, pp. 12-24; iv, 109-15; cf. also pp.
265, 296-99, 337, 502-10.
16. Whiffen, ch. xvii (p. 218 quoted); Church, p. 235. The subject
here is a continuation of that discussed in Ch. VIII, ii (with Note 7);
in connexion with which, with reference to Brazil, the comment of
Couto de Magalhaes is significant (part ii, p. 122): "Como quer que
seja, a idea de un Deus todo poderoso, e unico, nao foi possuida pelos
nossos selvagens ao tempo da descoberta da America; e pois nao era
possival que sua lingua tivesse uma palvra que a podesse expressar.
Ha no entretanto um principio superior qualificado com o nome
de Tupan a quem parece que attribuiam maior poder do que aos
outras." The real question to be resolved is what are the necessary
attributes of a "supreme being." Cf. Mythology oj All Nations, x.
Note 6.
Chapter X
1. On the physical and ethnological conditions of the Chaco and
ann'ees
1826-18^^; 9 vols., Paris, 1835-47.
"Linguistic Stocks of South American Indians." By A. F. Chamber-
lain. In A A, new series, xv (1913). Also, "South American
Linguistic Stocks," in CA xv. 2 (1908).
Manuel d'archeologie americaine. By H. Beuchat. Paris, 1912.
Moseteno Vocabulary and Treatises. By Benigno Bibolotti; with
introduction by R. Schuller. Evanston and Chicago, 191 7.
**Bibliography and map (Bolivian Indians).
*'Origenes Etnograficos de Colombia." By Carlos Cuervo Mar-
quez. In Proceedings of the Second Pan American Scientific
Congress, Vol. i. Washington, 191 7.
Pre-Historic America.By the Marquis de Nadaillac; ed. W. H.
Dall, London and New York, 1884.
South American Archaeology, London, 191 2; Mexican Archaeology,
London, 1914; Central American and West Indian Archaeology,
London, 1916. By T. A. Joyce.
The American Indian. An Introduction to the Anthropology of the
New World. By Clark Wissler. New York, 191 7.
"The Indian Linguistic Stocks of Oaxaca, Mexico." By Wm. H.
**
Mechling. In AA, new series, xiv (1912). Bibliography.
"The Origin and Distribution of Agriculture In America." By H. J.
Spinden. In CA xix (Washington, 1917).
Bancroft, H. H., The Native Races of the Pacific States. 5 vols. New
York, 1875.
Bastian, a.. Die Culturldnder des Alten America. 3 vols. Berlin,
1878-89.
Boas, Franz, The Mind of Primitive Man. New York, 191 1.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 385
Brinton, Daniel G., [a], Myths of the New World. 3d ed. Philadel-
phia, 1896.
[b], American Hero Myths. Philadelphia, 1882.
[c], Essays of an Americanist. Philadelphia, 1890.
Ehrenreich, Paul, [a], Die allgemeine Mythologie und ihre ethnolo-
gischen Grundlagen. Leipzig, 1910.
Falies, Louis, Etudes historiques et philosophiques sur les civilisa-
tions. 2 vols, Paris, no date.
Mexico.
Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology {Smithsonian
Institution). Washington, 1 88 1 ff.
London, 1831-48.
Biblioieca maritima espanola. Ed. Martin Fernandez de Navar-
RETE. 2 vols. Madrid, 185 1.
386 LATIN-AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY
Bibliotheque de linguistique et (T ethnographic americaines. Ed. A.
PiNART. Vols. i-iv. San Francisco, 1876-82.
Bulletin of the Bureau of American Ethnology {Smithsonian Institu-
tion). Washington, 1887 ff.
Coleccion de documentos ineditos -para la historia de Espana y de sus
Indias. Vols, i-xlii, 1864-84; second series. Vols, i-xiii, 1885-
1900. Madrid. Also, Nueva coleccion, etc.. Vols, i-vi, 1892-96.
Madrid.
Coleccion de documentos ineditos relativos al descuhrimiento, conquista,
y organizacion de las antiguas posesiones espaiiolas de America y
Oceania. Vols, i.-xlii. Madrid, 1864-84. Second series [Co/ifCfioM
de documentos ineditos de ultramar], Vols, ff., 1885 ff.
. . . i
a Vhistoire de la
Voyages, relations et memoires originaux pour servir
decouverte de VAmerique. Ed. H. Ternaux-Compans. Vols. i-xx.
Paris, 1837-41. Also, with other editors, Nouvelles annales des
Voyages, etc., in six series, Paris, 1819-65.
Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society. Vols. i-c. London, 1847-98.
Second series. Vols, i
ff., 1899 ff.
V. SELECT AUTHORITIES
Chapter I
Chapters II-III
AcosTA, JosE DE, S. J., Historia natural y moral de las Indias. Seville,
Mexico, 1900.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 39i
Bancroft, H. H., The Native Races of the Pacific States. 5 vols. New
York, 1875.
--Bastian, a., Die Culturldnder des alten America. 3 vols. Berlin,
1875-89.
Batres, Leopoldo, Teotihuacdn, 6 la ciudad sagrada de los Tolteca.
Mexico, 1906. (Spanish and English; the author has produced
also guides to Mitla, Palenque, etc.)
dies," in Anthropos,
iii
(1908); "Uber die mythologischen AfTen
^ der Mexikaner und Maya," in CA xviii (London, 1913); etc.
Charnay, Desire, [a]. Ancient Cities of the New World. New York,
1887.
V [b], Manuscrit Ramirez. Histoire de Vorigine des Indiens.
Paris, 1903.
Chavero, Alfredo, [a], "La Piedra del Sol," in AnMM ii (1882).
[b], "Los Dioses Astronomicos de los Antiguos Mexicanos,
Genin, Auguste, "Notes sur les danses, la musique et les chants des
Mexicains anciens," in Revue d'Ethnographie et de Sociologies
(1913)-
GoMARA, Francisco Lopez de, [b], Historia de Mexico, con el descu-
brimiento de la Nueva Espana, conquistada por el muy illustre
y valeroso principe Don Fernando Cortes, marques del Valle.
Anvers, 1554. Also, Segunda parte de la crdnica general de las
Indias, que trata de la conquista de Mejico {Historiadores primitivos
de Indias, Tomo i). Madrid, 1858.
Haebler, Konrad, Die Religion des mittleren Amerika. Miinster in
Westfalen, 1899.
Hagar, Stansbury, [a], "Elements of the Maya and Mexican
Zodiacs," in CA xvi (Vienna and Leipzig, 1910).
[b], "Zodiacal Symbolism of the Mexican and Maya Month
and Day Signs," in CA xvii. 2 (Mexico, 191 2).
Hamy, E. T., [a]. Codex Borbonicus. Paris, 1899.
/ [b], "Croyances et pratiques religieuses des premieres Mexi-
cains," and "Le culte des dieux Tlaloques," in AnMG xxv
(1907).
Helps, Arthur, The Spanish Conquest in America. 4 vols. New
York, 1856.
Herrera, Antonio de. See Bibliography to Chapter I.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 395
Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas. Published by Icazbal-
CETA in AnMM
ii
(Mexico, 1882), and in Nueva coleccion de
documentos para la historia de Mexico, Tomo iii (Mexico, 1897),
from a manuscript entitled Libro de oro y thesoro Indico, and also
known as Codex Zumdrraga and Codex Fuenleal. Tr. Henry
Phillips, "History of the Mexicans as Told by their Paintings,"
in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, xxi (1884).
1903)-
u" [d], Lyohsa 6 Mictlan, Guia Mexico,
historico-descriptiva.
1901. (Handsomely illustrated; Spanish and English text.)
Also articles in AnMM, CA, and elsewhere, dealing with the
antiquities of the Zapotec and Tarascan regions.
Leon y Gama, Antonio de, Descripcion historica y cronologica de las
dos piedras que con ocasion del nuevo empedrado que se estd for-
mando en la plaza principal de Mexico, se hallaron en el ano de
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Chapter X
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